The Princess and the Warrior (Der Krieger und die Kaiserin ) -- fate or meaninglessness?

Director: Tom Tykwer, 2000.

The Princess and the Warrior reunites writer-director Tykwer with Franka Potenta, the star of their earlier effort Run Lola Run. But where Run Lola Run was high octane energy throughout, this is a much slower paced and more reflective film.

This is the story of Sissi (Potenta) and Bodo (Benno Fürmann). She is a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, while he is an ex-soldier and drifter planning a crime. Both are emotionally fragile, harboring secret pains related to loss. Neither are looking for love. But their lives intersect in strange and repetitive ways.

Slow to start, The Princess lays groundwork showing Sissi's life. She lives in the hospital in a nurses' wing. She cares deeply for the patients, who all have some form of psychosis. Yet in her selfless giving it seems she is running and hiding from herself and the ghosts of her past and her childhood. She is like Cinderella, not knowing much of the real world, living a cloistered existence with this strange set of companions. Indeed, there is a disturbing scene of a sexual nature between Sissi and one of the patients early on.

We meet Bodo when he is running from a pair of security guards, having stolen some goods. Outpacing them, he runs in and out of traffic, ducking into and running through stores. It is the same day Sissi has chosen to take one of the patients out on a day trip. When Bodo, oblivious to his surroundings and only focused on escape, jumps on the rear ladder of an 18-wheeler their separate circumstances converge. She walks in front to save her patient as the driver looks back at Bodo. The impact knocks her down, leaves her broken under the truck, unable to breathe. When Bodo finally sees what is going on, he crawls below with a knife and a straw and performs an emergency tracheotomy. His presence of mind saves her life. As she lays there in between life and death, she begins to imagine he is the man of her dreams, the warrior for this princess.

Two months later she is released from the hospital and returns to her work. But she is changed. There is something driving her now. She wants to find her knight in shining armor. She believes fate has brought him into her life and she will pursue fate at any cost. With diligence and determination she finally gets his address. Like Amélie, she is a picture of a wandering waif looking for love.

When she makes it to Bodo's house, they meet and fall in love. Well, that would be the Hollywood version. In the German version he wants nothing to do with her. He is living with his brother Walter (Joachim Krol) struggling to make sense of his loss and believing his life is meaningless. He wants no romantic interruption from a strange woman. Instead, he and Walter are planning to rob a bank so they can go to Australia. Rejected, she cannot understand why fate had brought him into her life.

However, this is not the end of the story. As Sissi goes into the bank to open a bank deposit box for a friend it happens to be the bank they are planning to rob on the day they are to commit the crime at the time they are doing it. When things go wrong in the robbery, Sissi feels magnetically drawn into the midst of the crime, saving Bodo's life. But now she finds herself an accessory to the crime even though she did not intend this to happen.

The film's final act recounts how Sissi takes the lead to help Bodo escape. Realizing that her life and future is inextricably linked to his now, she leaves with him on a journey far away. But before doing so, he helps her to unravel a misunderstanding about her earlier loss. And on the journey, in a surreal scene with two Bodos and one Sissi, Bodo finds release and redemption.

Robert K. Johnston has provided a masterful and critical analysis of this movie and Tykwer's Run Lola Run in his book, Useless Beauty. He has focused on how these two movies, along with a host of others, interpret and illustrate the book of Ecclesiastes. He has influenced my approach to this movie and so some of his thoughts may emerge here.

The fundamental themes Tykwer plays with are fate and time. He shows how the two conflicting world views of Sissi (fate) and Bodo (meaninglessness) collide and how ultimately Sissi's view wins over. Bodo's view that life is meaningless is echoed in Ecc. 2:22-23. It often appears that there is no meaning to what we do. Things happen with no reason. But Sissi's view of fate is that there is a reason. Fate, or ultimate agency directing a person and decreeing events, leads Sissi to Bodo. Biblically, we would look at this and see the hand of God at work in his sovereign control of all events in history (Dan. 4:25). There is no fate other than the sovereignty of God.

The movie's end parallels its start. At the beginning we see a woman in a cottage by the sea. This house is secluded, high atop a cliff. She is the one sending the letter to Sissi to go to the bank. At the end Sissi and Bodo drive to this cottage. It is the castle for the princess. The movie ends like a fairy tale, with the princess and the prince (or warrior) living happily ever after in this cliff-top castle-cottage. And through this "fate"-ful journey, both Sissi and Bodo have found redemption. They have helped each other to reconcile and understand their losses. They have each saved the other's life. There has been meaning in their lives and the denouement leaves us with the impression that there will be future meaning in their lives also.

Likewise, Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, tells us that there is meaning after all. God has "set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecc. 3:11) and it is a satisfaction to work hard and enjoy life. We can find meaning, not in fate but in God. If we look for him we will find him in the person of Jesus. And he will bring meaning to the short span of time we call life.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- fame and fitting in

Director: Guillermo del Toro, 2008.

Del Toro, noted for directing the acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth, returns to the Hellboy movie franchise he started in 2004. While the original Hellboy was fun, and Pan's Labyrinth was dark and gripping, a fairy story for adults, Hellboy II feels old and tired. There is no question that Del Toro has a fertile imagination, but I can only take so many monsters and weird creatures, especially when most of them are secondary to the plot.

The movie opens with a young Hellboy hearing a bed-time story from his father. It is the story of a long-ago war between humans and elfs. When the elf king has a a mechanical army of golden warriors made, his victory is secure. These mechanical warriors cannot be defeated. Neither hungering or fearing death, they unreservedly push forward until their enemies are totally destroyed. But the king cannot let that happen and so he seals a pact with the humans. They can have the towns and cities, and his people will have the forests. So the golden army is put back to sleep, locked away until they are needed again. Only when the three pieces of the broken crown are reunited and placed on a royal head can the army be awakened and ordered once again into battle. This prologue is portrayed in an interesting and simple animation.

Moving ahead two millennia or so, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) returns from exile and wants to wage a final war against the humans, using this golden army. Since it defies his father's will, he decides to take matters into his own hands. Breaking the ancient pact, even killing his own father to become ruler of the elves, he sets the scene for a war between species.

When we see the adult Hellboy (Ron Perlman) he is more or less confined to his room where he lives with Liz Sherman (Selma Blair). His superiors do not want him seen out in public for fear of the terror this red demon-looking being will incite. But "red" (Hellboy) wants out. He has cabin fever and a desire to be known. The gauntlet that Prince Nuada throws down is his first opportunity.

Nuada, wanting to initiate the war, brings Mr. Wink, a one-eyed monster, and a set of tooth fairies to an auction where one piece of the golden crown is up for sale. Of all the bizarre creatures that Del Toro throws at us here, the tooth fairies were by far my favorite. They are like fanged flying piranhas. When they swarm onto a person they can devour him in a matter of minutes, starting with the teeth of course.

In the scene where Hellboy, Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and Liz do battle with these little monsters, the final recourse is for Liz to do her thing, setting herself ablaze. And Hellboy, seeing what is coming is ready to be blasted out of the building right in front of the gathered crowd and the press cameras. Talk about low profile. Gone is any attempt at keeping Hellboy, Abe (aka blue) and Liz a secret. They are on all the network news channels. As a result his boss Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) is replaced by Johann Krauss (John Alexander), a German ectoplasmic being who uses a special suit to keep his spirit-like substance contained. And being German, he is a stickler for protocol ("there are procedures, rules and little handbooks . . ."), which immediately puts him on the wrong side of Hellboy.

When Nuada's twin sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), escapes with one third of the crown, she meets Abe and Hellboy in the weird troll marketplace. Filled with beings of all shapes and sizes, Hellboy and Abe fit right in. They are more normal than most.

The second half of Hellboy II pits red, blue, Liz and Krauss against the power of Prince Nuada and his awakened army. On the way, they face the goblin who created the army, as well as the angel of death.

One scene stands out as a humorous if bizarre commentary on love and male insensitivity. Hellboy walks in on Abe who is listening to a CD of Barry Manilow singing, "Can't Smile Without You." Abe is smitten with the princess and is both singing and living these lyrics. Hellboy, in turn, is having relationship difficulties with Liz and does not know why she is behaving the way she is. He, too, is in love and not smiling without his Liz. So, Hellboy does what any red-blooded red-demon would do, he grabs a six-pack of beer. Together, red and blue get drunk and sing-along with Barry. It's a sing-along moment.

Two of the main themes in Hellboy II are fame and fitting in. Throughout the first half of the film, Hellboy wants to know if he is liked. He wants to be known, to be famous in the outside world beyond the confines of his underground home. His boss, too, keeps asking if others like him.

This striving after fame, typically accompanied by the desire for fortune, is common to humanity. We often want our children to be rich and famous. But fame and fortune are fickle bed-fellows. Even when Hellboy becomes famous, he is not always liked. Some people see him as simply an ugly creature, not someone to interact with and like. Wanting to be liked is sometimes a response to an internal insecurity. If we are not comfortable with who we are, we look to others to assuage our anxieties. Being liked is not in itself an ethical issue. But the underlying inner problem that drives this desire can be.

Furthermore, being liked often comes at the price of fitting in, conforming to others' expectations. Prince Nuada sees through Hellboy and points this out, "Demon. Born from a womb of shadows, sent to destroy their world and you still believe you belong?" Later, when confronting Hellboy, he adds to this challenge: "You have more in common with us than with them." Hellboy does not fit into the world of humanity. He is demon-like, with red skin, sawn-off horns and a tail. In a word, a freak. He does belong in the world of Nuada, where there are other monsters. But he loves Liz and will not leave her. As she has made her choices in this film, so Hellboy has made his choices. He will not fit in but he comes to realize this and to live with it. Sometimes we don't fit in. Especially as followers of the Christ, our world view has been turned around and values and beliefs no longer match those of our relatives, friends or coworkers. Yet, with our choice comes the responsibility to push aside peer pressure and live openly and honestly with integrity. We may not be liked by some but we are loved by the supreme one (1 Jn. 4:10).

In fact, at the outset Prince Nuada makes a startling claim to the auction-goers, dressed in their fine black evening wear. He tells them they are hollow humans, with a hole in their heart. They are missing something. Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French scientist and philosopher, said something remarkably similar: "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.” Many centuries before Pascal King Solomon said that God has set "eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecc. 3:11). We can only find fulfillment and true satisfaction when we turn our lives over to Jesus. When we do this we find that he fills this void with himself as he comes to live in our hearts. How is your heart?

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

Brideshead Revisited -- forbidden love, guilt and grace

Director: Julian Jarrold, 2008.

Brideshead Revisited is based on the book by Catholic writer Evelyn Waugh. Set in pre-World War 2 England, it is the story of Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and his friendship with brother and sister Sebastian (Ben Whishaw) and Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell), a friendship that turned into forbidden love.

The opening scene captures the main theme and forms an archway with the closing scene. We see the back of an officer walking out of a castle with his voice-over narration:

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name: Charles Ryder. For the rest, my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be. On second thoughts, one emotion remains my own. Alone among the borrowed and the secondhand, as pure as that faith from which I am still in flight. . . guilt.

The film explores the theme of guilt, and how it impacts a family. But it is not just guilt, there is grace, too, along with the sin that brings on the guilt. In flashback we learn the story of Charles' interactions with Brideshead Castle and the family who made it their home.

Charles, a middle-class young man and aspiring artist, leaves his widowed father in London to go up to Oxford to study history. Through a chance encounter he becomes friends with Sebastian Flyte, a homosexual and profligate. But Sebastian is also a Lord and can afford to waste his time and money at Oxford. As their friendship develops, Sebastian takes Charles to visit his home, Brideshead Castle, but he won't let him meet his mother. When he finally does, it is clear why Sebastian has been avoiding this. His mother, Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), is a strict Roman Catholic, ruling her family as a domineering matriarch.

Lady Marchmain rules with guilt, ladling it out alongside her religion as a means of control. But instead of forming a bedrock foundation for her family, as the grace of Christianity should do, guilt causes the opposite. Sebastian and Julia pull away from their mother. As grace is freeing, guilt apart from grace is legalistic. It leads to division and separation. In trying to control her family, she lost her husband and then little by little her children Sebastian and Julia.

That summer Charles is lured to Brideshead to spend the vacation there, and he and Sebastian wile away the lazy days drinking and swimming and picnicking. But one night they drink too much and Sebastian advances on Charles and they share a kiss. A kiss that leaves them awkward and unsure of their relationship. When Sebastian and Julia declare they want to visit their father and his mistress in Venice, Lady Marchmain, sensing Charles is respectable, suggests he go too. But there is an ulterior motive: she wants him to keep tabs on Sebastian.

In Venice we find Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon), a likable rogue who has turned away from the rigidity of his wife's faith to become agnostic, living in sin. It is in Venice that Charles realizes he is drawn to Julia not Sebastian. And during a night of carnival revelry, Charles and Julia kiss. Another kiss, another awkward relationship. What adds fuel to the fire is Sebastian witnessing this, and realizing the object of his affection, Charles, does not reciprocate. Such unrequited love causes Sebastian to turn to drink with a vengeance, and he becomes an alcoholic.

Of course Lady Marchmain learns of the attraction to Julia, and she makes it clear that Charles can never marry Julia. This is not a result of class division; it is strictly a clash of competing religions. Julia is Catholic, at least in the eyes of her mother. And Charles is an avowed atheist, which itself is a faith belief in no God. Two faiths come head-on into collision and Catholicism wins. Indeed, at Julia's birthday party where her surprise engagement to a Canadian is announced, Lady Marchmain banishes Charles for giving money to Sebastian to fund his rampant alcoholism. Forbidden love, forbidden friendship.

Years later, Charles is an accomplished artist and married. While on a cruise with his wife showing his art, he spots Julia, also married. Pursuing her, they rekindle their forbidden love now that her mother is dead. Leaving his wife, Charles takes Julia back to Brideshead to face her husband and negotiate a divorce settlement. He does so, but as they leave they see her father returning to Brideshead. He is terminal and has come home to die. Julia cannot leave her father and so they stay. While on his death-bed, Lord Marchmain receives the sacrament of last rites and receives grace and absolution for his sins. He has not only returned to Brideshead, he has returned to his faith. And in doing so, he causes Julia to reflect on her faith and her guilt causes her to separate from Charles.

Lord Marchmain offered a cynical view of Catholic faith earlier when he said he thought it was wonderful because it allowed a person to sin and then be forgiven through confession. He recognized the grace of God's offer of forgiveness, a forgiveness that is as true for followers of Jesus. Yet, his approach was one of licentiousness. And Paul combats this errant thinking in Romans 6:13, when he says, "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!" Grace is sufficient to provide forgiveness and draw the sinner to the merciful and loving God. But not as means to habitual sin, a constant shaking the fist in the face of God.

Charles was seduced by what he saw at Brideshead and in Venice: ambition, desires, privilege, a life of sensual pleasures. He wanted to become like the Flytes, to be one of them. But he was not prepared to adopt their religion. Still, he followed this path like a lamb to the slaughter. The Bible warns of giving into the cravings the world offer, calling it "the lust of the eyes" (1 Jn. 2:16). Every temptation has its price. In the end Charles lost all that he had. He wanted what he could not have and was willing to give up what he had in an attempt to gain his forbidden love. To no avail. He ended up with secondhand emotions created by copying those he emulated. How often do we crave what we cannot have and refuse to see what we do have? The saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side. But the reality is something else entirely.

In many ways Brideshead Revisited is similar to Atonement. Both are set in the period between the two world wars. Both are visually beautiful. Both focus on the interaction between middle or lower class men and upper class women. Both deal with themes of sin, guilt and redemption. Both, indeed, have unsympathetic characters. But Brideshead has a stronger story and a stronger cast. Thompson is perfect as the ice-queen ruling her family having pushed her husband away. Goode holds his own as the tragic hero, and has good chemistry with Atwell. And Whishaw is excellent as the fragile son who cannot please his mother and turns to his own way in an act of rebellion.

The closing scene, years later still, returns to the opening scene. Charles is back at Brideshead. He goes into the family chapel, and sees the candle burning there. About to extinguish it, he finds he cannot and turns away. He stills feel guilt and cannot put out the light. In some sense, the grace that has been present all along has touched Charles and is drawing him away from his atheism. Indeed, his guilt is evidence perhaps of his recognition of his moral failures, which as an atheist he could deny. Perhaps as the Light of the World, Jesus, cannot be extinguished so in some small way Charles leaves a testimony to the truth of grace; this is a witness to the work of grace in his own guilt-filled heart. If so, that is indeed a work of grace.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

Most Redeeming Movies of 2008; WALL•E's Screening at Mosaic

Christianity Today just released their list of "Most Redeeming Films of 2008." At the top of their list is WALL•E, a terrific Pixar film and a love story for the ages. For those of you in the Portland locale, this is the film we will be showing for the next gathering of the Mosaic Film and Faith connect group. Appropriately, we are showing this on Valentine's Day at Mosaic Church.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs