Watchmen -- watching society, saving humanity

Director: Zach Snyder, 2009.

Snyder has done what many thought impossible: turned Watchmen into a movie that is faithful to the novel. Alan Moore's book has been called the greatest graphic novel of all time. It is certainly no comic book story. Rather, it is dense and deep, with sidebar articles that provide backstory for many of the characters that shed light on the mystery itself. Most of these sidebars have disappeared to make this film a reasonable length. Still, it runs almost three hours, a dark and gritty, violent and gory tale that will surely satisfy fans of the graphic novel. For those who have not read this modern classic, the film may be a little confusing.

It is 1985 and an alternate America where Nixon is President for a third term. The cold war is still hot and the world is on the brink of nuclear destruction. Society has descended into depravity and despair. There is a need for a savior.

At the start, Snyder gives a montage of images that paint the history of America since WW2. Masked vigilantes emerged to watch over society. These so-called superheroes are merely men and women who are prepared to fight crime, for one reason or another. One image shows a group of these watchmen together at a retirement party. This party photo is a recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" and is clearly painting the parallel to Christ and his disciples. Yet, missing from the picture is the Christ figure. He will show up later.

Snyder employs songs from the 60s-80s on the soundtrack to perfectly match the mood and tone of the film. Bob Dylan's "The times they are a changing" takes us from these histories to 1985 and underscores the pint that change has come. The government has passed a bill outlawing masked men. Their days of vigilante justice are gone. Capes are hung up, masks removed. Superheroes are retired. Yet still society is under attack.

Snyder paints a dark picture of humanity. The rule of mob law and the depravity of the superheroes themselves points to the savage nature of mankind. This is an exaggerated but sadly true picture of humanity. We are depraved (Jer. 17:9), we are tainted by sin. None has lived a righteous life (Rom. 3:10); all have turned away from God (Isa. 53:6).

So when the Comedian, Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), is brutally murdered in his high-rise apartment, the other watchmen start to wonder if it is a conspiracy to kill them all. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), another superhero wearing a mask that mutates in rorschach ink-blot patterns, is determined to solve the mystery. And it brings him back in touch with an old partner Dan / Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson). The watchmen start to reconnect with each other: Ozymandias (Matthew Goode, Brideshead Revisited), the smartest and wealthiest man alive; Laurie / Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman, The Proposal), and her lover Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup).

Although these superheroes want to make the world a better place, their motives are mixed and so are their methods. Rorschach lives with the principle, "Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon." He wants to exercise justice on the unjust, the lowlife criminals, but he does so without mercy or compassion. There is nothing that separates him from those he is trying to rid society of. Justice is one thing, justice tempered with grace is quite another.

Ozymandis believes that the solution to war is to find enough resources to go around. If he can rid the world of its reliance on oil and fossil fuels, he can bring in a utopia. What a dream! He does not count on the darkness that lives within the human heart (Rom. 1:21). That cannot be cured by a socialist approach. It requires a savior's touch.

Throughout Snyder intersperses brief vignettes showing us who the watchmen really are. Comedian, the first to die, is the only government-endorsed superhero. But, who watches the watchment? The Comedian is actually a psychopath who relishes societal violence as an opportunity for him to exercise violence on others. We see him enjoying the killing fields of Vietnam and showing no remorse while coldly gunning down a lover.

"Who watches the watchman" dates back to Aristotle who coined this phrase in response to Plato's theory of the filakes, the ancient watchmen who would be the ultimate, infallible authority in the perfect city-state (see "The Republic"). But who really watches the watchmen? When we give too much power to those who are supposed to be protecting us, we run the risk of corrupting those very people we trust. The watchmen in this story are not perfect. They are people with flaws and weaknesses. They are, in some cases, worse than the worst of society. And they get off on the power that is thrust on them. No one, so it seems, is watching these watchmen. But someone is. And that someone is killing them off. Who and why is the mystery that Rorschach, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II set out to solve.

Of all the superheroes, there is only one who actually has super powers -- Dr. Manhattan. His backstory is given midway through the film. A physicist Jon Osterman gets locked into a lab when a field energy experiment is underway and his body is vaporized only to become reassembled later. When he returns, he is transformed into a huge naked blue being who can change matter. He can mentally transport himself or others to any place he desires. Used initially by the government to win the Vietnam war, he becomes more and more distant from his lover, Laurie, until she leaves him.

It is Dr. Manhattan who is the missing Christ-figure. Referring to him, one of his friends says, "I did not say there is a superman and he is American. I said there is a God and he is American." From superman to god, he is deified. And no wonder, he can see past, present and future. He can manipulate matter. He can materialize anywhere he wants. He can split into multiple beings, a veritable holy trinity of blue Jons.

Before the advent of cgi filming, the special effects needed for Dr. Manhattan would have been difficult and overly expensive. With today's technology Snyder pulls off a miracle making this god-like man believable. The scenes on Mars in his ice-palace take our breath away even as Laurie has no breath to take when she is transported there.

The comparison with Christ is clearly worth considering. Dr. Manhattan has resurrected from death to new life and, like Jesus, upon his return he is a new kind of body. Just as Jesus appeared in a room behind locked doors (Jn. 20:26), Dr. Manhattan can suddenly show up in a different place. Further, he was the savior for America in the Vietnam war and is their hope for peace and security amidst the cold war. And when it becomes clear that it requires a scapegoat to save earth from hell, Dr. Manhattan allows himself to be that scapegoat, just like Jesus is our scapegoat (Jn. 11:50).

But Jesus is not a nationalistic savior. Though a Jew and sent to the Jews, Jesus is the savior of the whole world (Jn. 3:16). He is our hope (1 Tim. 4:10), our peace (Jn. 14:27), our security (Psa. 18:2) amidst all human wars.

Indeed Dr. Manhattan is not God, and the contrasts are clear. He was born a man, and is thus a creature. Christ, on the other hand, pre-existed creation (Jn. 1:1). He has always existed and is the creator not one of his created beings. In his new super-body, Dr. Manhattan can see the past, present and future. But he can only see his, not that of others. And when tachyons are used, they shield even his future so he cannot see what is coming. Whereas God can see all of time for all of us. Further, Dr. Manhattan says, in one scene, "I am tired of her, of these people, of the tangle of their lives." He has lost interest in humanity -- "Why would I save a world I no longer have a stake in?" God, on the other hand, is so involved with humanity that he sent Jesus to became one of us, descending from his position on the throne of God (Phil. 2:5). He loved us so much he went to the cross giving up his life for us.

Finally, Dr. Manhattan says, "I can change almost anything . . . but I can't change human nature." How unlike Christ. He who made us innocent (Gen. 2:25), saw mankind become corrupt and sinful (Rom. 3:12). He watched us turn away from God in our savage nature (Gen. 3:1-11). But through his sacrifice, he can change human nature. He can make us into new creatures with a new nature if we turn to him (Jn. 1:12). He can re-create us (2 Cor. 5:17), and to those who become his followers he will mold us into his perfect image (Rom. 8:29). And he has placed in us his Holy Spirit (Jn. 14:16-17). God now lives in us, his followers, not in Dr. Manhattan.

When it all comes to a close, we are reminded that there is only true watchman, one true savior. He stands apart from the rest in his personal involvement. He is the craftsman that has created all and he desires for this creation to be remade (Rom. 8:18-24). One day he will return and peace will be established. Until then, let's put our hope in our Watchman.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

No Man's Land -- the absurdities of war

Director: Danis Tanovic, 2001.

"War is hell." Civil War General William Sherman said this in an address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy in 1879. Films have explored this thought, most notably Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg showed us the violence and gore close-up, especially in the opening sequence of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

130 years after Sherman's famous quote, Pope Benedict XVI declared, "The human tragedies and the absurdity of war remain in people's memories." Although talking about WW2, the pope could have been describing any war, anywhere. Writer-director Tanovic focuses on the absurdity and insanity of war in this movie that won the 2002 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (beating out Amélie).

No Man's Land is set in the Bosnian-Serb conflict of the 1990s, and gives war a very personal and bleak picture by honing in on three soldiers. Ciki (Branko Djuric) and Cera (Filip Sovagovic) are Bosnians, while Nino (Rene Bitorajac) is a Serb.

After their guide loses his way in the dense fog, a sudden firefight finds the two Bosnians in a no man's land trench between the two armies' front-lines, Ciki is wounded and Cera is apparently dead. When the Serbs send out two soldiers to scout out what happened, Nino is one of them. The other puts a "bouncing bomb" mine underneath the body of Cera to boobytrap the corpse, but a brief skirmish leaves this Serb dead and Nino wounded. These three wounded soldiers form the core around which Tanovic delivers his thoughts about war.

In one scene, Ciki has a rifle pointed at Nino while both are hiding in a hut in the trench from the shelling by one side who does not care who is in the trench as long as he is killed. His bitter animosity emerges when he asks Nino who started the war. Neither will admit his party and ethnicity to be in the wrong. But finally he tells Nino to admit that the Serbs are at fault. When Nino asks why he should do so, Ciki says "Because I have a gun and you don't." Later, the roles are reversed when Nino gets the rifle, and asks "Now . . . tell me. Who started the war?" And Ciki has to respond, "We did."

These two scenes highlight two moral concepts. First is the universal need to be right. No one will willingly lay their life down in battle for a cause that is wrong. They may be forced into this via conscription or threat, but most soldiers go to war believing their nation is in the right. And a person whose village has been burned and whose relatives have been maimed or killed cannot easily hold onto the idea that his nation started the conflict, although often the initiator is lost in the history of the violence.

The second moral concept is that might is right. The man holding the weapon becomes the man in the right as Ciki testifies. But might is right is an errant philosophy. Just because Ciki holds the rifle does not mean the Serbs started the war. He simply has the power to make the Serb say what he wants to hear or risk being killed. Might is right is simply wrong. When we misuse our might and power to make others say and do things we want, we are guilty of coercion and no better than the enemy who we think started the war.


Ciki represents the bitter cynicism that is generated by war. He has seen his family tortured and killed and wants nothing more than revenge on those who made him suffer. Nino, on the other hand, represents the innocence of humanity. He came to the front as a virgin soldier, never having experienced combat. But he was not accepted, even by his fellow Serbs. When he is confronted by Ciki he tells him his name and extends his hand for a handshake, but he is rebuffed. There is no place for friendship with the enemy for Ciki, only hatred. Even though they have common ground in a mutual acquaintance, the bitterness of war will not allow for sharing of names or shaking of hands. Little by little, his innocence is tarnished and Nino becomes bitter himself, another casualty of war.

Ciki and Nino have fallen prey to the workings of the depraved human nature. It seems normal to hate those who hurt our families and who would do us harm. But such hatred fueled this conflict and led inevitably to the desire for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Millennia before this war occurred, though, Jesus shocked the crowds listening to his sermon on the mount with a counter-cultural command, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:43-44). It is easy to love those who love us, like our spouses, our families, our friends. But it is only by the working of the Spirit that we are empowered and enabled to love those enemies.

Tanovic adds two more elements to this tragedy to highlight the absurdity of war. First there are the UN Peace-keepers. They are the blue-helmeted soldiers sent to keep the peace, not to become involved in the conflict. Their mission is to avoid putting their own forces in harm's way. Yet, one French sergeant, tired of this disinvolvement, determines to disobey the implied orders and provide help. Coming to the trench, he sees the three wounded soldiers. He offers to rescue Nino and Ciki and take them to freedom and safety, but their common hatred steps in the way and prevents their rescue.

Jesus has come down to our war-torn and sin-infected planet to offer humanity rescue and freedom. Yet like the Ciki, much of humankind refuses this offer. They see this as unfair, offering to friend and foe the same opportunity for redemption. Since the enemy apparently does not deserve this chance at new life and since this would stop the war without bringing victory or vengeance, the offer is rejected. How sad and absurd that such faulty logic will cloud our thinking.

In coming to the trench, the French sergeant unwittingly brings the press. When a British reporter learns what is going on, she manipulates the peacekeepers and forces the hand of the presiding UN Officer until all the press are allowed to visit this no man's land. Tanovic forces us to ask the question, what is the role of the press in war? Unlike in earlier, more traditional conflicts, like WW2, where reporters went out with the troops, here the press stand apart from the two sides. Although seemingly neutral, these reporters here have moved beyond mere observation to direct provocation. They are not concerned about the lives of the three soldiers in the trench. They are simply concerned with the live broadcasts that will go out globally and generate more viewers or sell more stories. War has become commercialized for consumers.

No Man's Land is ultimately a dark and disturbing view of war and the absurdities that circle around it. But it is more than that. It is a sad social commentary on people and organizations. From soldiers to civilians, peace-keepers to the press, none is above reproach. All are tainted. As tragic as it is, Tanovic's film puts a human face on the absurdity of war, and leaves us deep in thought as his final frame hovers above a dead soldier.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

The Taste of Others (Le goût des autres ) -- the power of art

Director: Agnès Jaoui, 2000.

What value does art have in our lives? Can it bring transformation? Is it an acquired taste? Actor-writer Jaoui puts the spotlight on art and love in her directorial debut. This is a slow French comedy of sex, good taste and bad manners. What story there is centers on three men and three women whose lives intersect. These interactions form the crucible for their character development.

Early in the film we see Castella (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a wealthy industrialist who owns a steel plant in Rouen. He is being driven back from a lunch engagement by his driver Bruno (Alain Chabat, I Do). He slowly but vacantly gazes out of the window, bored, seeing nothing. Looking, he does not see.

This reminds us of the parables Jesus told. These stories had important messages to those who heard and understood. But, when his dull disciples asked why he spoke this way, Jesus said, "This is why I speak to them in parables: 'Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand' " (Matt. 13:13). How often do we drift through life, looking but not really seeing. Just like Castella, our minds are elsewhere. We are blind people walking.

When Castella and his wife Angélique (Christiane Millet) later go to the theater, he is once again bored, wishing to be elsewhere. He is a rich philistine, not appreciating the finer things in life. But his eye is caught by Clara (Anne Alvaro), the lead actress in the Greek tragedy and he gazes at her with rapt attention. Somehow, his artless heart has become alive to what is before him. She was the woman he failed to hire as an English teacher. Recognition dawns and so does the spark of life.

If Castella and Clara are the main characters who will change, Angélique and Bruno form a pair of naive foils. He is seemingly faithful to his fiancee, abroad and distant. But his heart is fickle and infidelity becomes a foregone conclusion. She is married but going through the motions. In one scene she and Castella are gazing at the TV engaged with the show but not really with other. Both Angélique and Bruno seem to take for granted what is apparently theirs in the relationships they are in. Yet for both, their partners awake to the taste of others that leaves them surprised and shaken. Angélique's retreat is her interior decorating hobby, a form of art, while Bruno's is his attempt at flute playing.

And then there are Manie (Jaoui) and Franck (Gérard Lanvin). She is a pretty barmaid who deals hash for a living. He is Castella's temporary bodyguard. Both have a cynical approach to love and relationships: casual sex is their choice. He boasts of his hundreds of conquests to the naive Bruno. She tells Franck that she approaches sex like a man: no love just physical union. But by the time the movie is over, they have found in each other someone so much like themselves that they are ready to change.

Manie and Franck represent the mindset and lifestyle of so many today. Sex is simply a form of pleasure to be enjoyed with a person whose name we might never know or forget within days. Partner after partner, faces disappear into the pack. But is this really beneficial or is it simply a taste of others that damages our dignity and puts another brick in our barricade? Both Manie and Franck seem to have a fear of intimacy that they hide behind the physical act of coupling. Surely this is not what God intended when he made man and woman? No, sex is intended to be a loving and intimate act that opens us up to the other, revealing while bringing pleasure. Sex is meant to be enjoyed within the realm of marriage, one man with one woman, committed to one another (Gen. 2:25; Heb. 13:4). Although Manie and Franck find fulfillment in one another, it has taken them y4ars and countless individuals to get there.

Which brings us back to Castella and Clara. After he has gazed upon the beauty of her acting, he wants more. Castella becomes like a puppy in love, wanting to spend time with her, though he is clueless among her bohemian artist friends. She wants little to do with him, but this does not stop him. As he hangs with her, he begins to see art. His eyes are open as if for the first time. She, in turn, is 40 and wants love but cannot find it from the men around her. She cannot see what is in front of her face: Castella. Her preconceptions keep her closed off to this businessman.

Art can have a transformative effect. Just like in this film, it can open our eyes to see things we never dreamed of, to experiences we never felt before. Even if we are not particularly gifted artistically, we can still appreciate what others have created or their performances. Like Castella, I am not an artist yet I have in my family a fine fabric artist and a singing-dancing actrss. I am learning to taske and savor the power of art.

Art stems from God. He created humanity in his image (Gen. 1:26) and as such we have an innate ability to create and express ourselves. There are numerous forms of art, including painting, theater, film, music, quilting. All offer a way of self-expression. If art is fine, it will transcend and inspire, it will open us up to new potentialities. It adds beauty to lives that otherwise may be insipid and dull. And as art points us to beauty we are drawn back to the Artist who made it all possible, the Lord. He is beautiful (Psa. 27:4) and beauty itself.

Art may transform us, turning us from philistines to connoisseurs. But it is the Artist, Jesus, who can transform us truly from within. He can remake us as beautiful works of art. But we must let him. We must allow him to paint on the canvas of our lives. When we do that we experience the beauty of new life (2 Cor. 5:17).

As The Taste of Others closes, Castello gazes on Clara performing beautifully, and she gazes back. Both have been changed. And Bruno plays the theme from Edith Piaf's great song, "Je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing). His musical art has transformed him, leaving him with no regrets. Art can truly do that.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs

Carlito's Way -- honor, loyalty and change

Director: Brian De Palma, 1993.

"And I want to thank a lot of people for that. I look over there and I see that man there, Mr. Norwalk. I want to thank you, sir. . . . And I want to thank AImighty God. . . . I can't believe this. I must have forgot. How could I forget my dear, close friend and lawyer David Kleinfeld, who never gave up on me through everything, thick and thin."

This is Al Pacino giving his awards speech for his one and only Oscar, won for the 1992 Scent of a Woman, right? No, actually this is Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino) in a courtroom at the start of this film addressing the judge who sentenced him to a 30 year prison stretch as it is over-turned after five years on a technicality.

Al Pacino has played his share of gangsters. He starred as Tony Montana in De Palma's 1983 Scarface. But his most memorable gangster role was as Michael Corleone (The Godfather Trilogy). As Sicilian Corleone, he was the college graduate who wanted nothing to do with the family business but found himself inevitably drawn in. As a result he was changed, corrupted by the inisidious evil that was the heart of the mafia. Here as Puerto Rican Brigante, he is a heroin-dealing gangster, a former big fish in New York who emerges from prison with a change of perspective.

In his courtroom theatrics, Carlito declares, "But my time in the sterling correctional facilities of Greenhaven and Sing Sing has not been in vain. I've been cured; born again. . . . I've changed." This is no religious conversion, but it is a sincere change of heart. This ex-con wants to go straight.

Carlito's reference to being born again takes us back to the first century conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Jesus told this Jewish leader, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again" (Jn. 3:3). He was referring to the fundamental life change that occurs when a person decides to follow Jesus. An act of faith, it is an act of conversion. It requires an act of God to turn a cold and callous heart of stone into a living, throbbing heart of flesh (Ezek. 36:26). Being born again brings with it new life (Rom. 6:4), new perspective, a desire to follow the straight and narrow path (Matt. 7:14). We may not be convicts who have spent years behind bars, but we all have gone astray and committed sin (Isa. 53:6). We all need to experience this healing, this rebirth that frees us from our own prisons, much like Carlito.

Carlito has seen the corpses in the dark alleys of his former way of life. Indeed, he has put many of them there himself. But he wants no more of this. He has a plan to earn enough money to buy into a legitimate business venture in the Bahamas and be a regular citizen. But can he do this? Or will his old instincts kick in? Will his misplaced loyalties and his former friends lead him astray, straight back into his former way of life? Those are the questions De Palma asks in this violent but unusual gangster film.

When he agrees to help a relative with a quick drug deal, Carlito does so reluctantly. But this reintroduces him to the violence he left behind. Guns and drugs equate to easy, if dangerous, money. With this money he buys into a nightclub and becomes a manager. Running the club more on reputation, Carlito still carries enough weight to scare the young turks who see themselves as the new Carlito.

But it is Carlito's lawyer, David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn in a wild afro) who proves more of a threat. Kleinfeld has gotten Carlito out of prison, so Carlito owes him. And he treats him like a dear friend, even a brother. But this lawyer is a sleazy and corrupt cokehead, and has more problems than the ex-con. When he calls on Carlito for a favor, old loyalties prove too strong. Even his old love Gail (Penelope Ann Miller) cannot dissuade him from doing something foolish.

Carlito's way is to honor old debts. He owes Kleinfeld and will pay him back. There is a sense of transactional fairness and equality. He wants to change his way but this debt is an albatross that flies slowly overhead preventing Carlito from a new way. How unlike Jesus' offer of change. We have a debt, a debt of sin. That debt requires payment of a life. It should be our life, but Jesus walked in our shoes and paid our debt with his own life. No longer do we need to pay our debts for sin. Grace has made Jesus' way possible for us.

Carlito's loyalty to his friend proves his undoing. He knows this, yet still proceeds: "There is a line you cross, you don't never come back from. Point of no return. Dave crossed it. I'm here with him." Just like in Gone Baby Gone, there is a decision that can never be unmade once made. Later, he tells Dave, "Never give up your friends, Dave, no matter what." There is honor and loyalty among some thieves, though not all. Carlito may not give up his friends, but he may let them get what they deserve. In contrast, Jesus wll not give up his friends and will not let them get what they deserve. Justice is trumped by mercy. God is both just and the justifier (Rom. 3:26), and he has provided a way for us to be free in Christ. Once we come to him by faith, he will never give up on us (Rom. 8:38-39). He will not give us up to the devil.

Honor and loyalty are the code of ethics that drove Carlito and caused his downfall. They were his core values. He cried out in desperation to Gail, "It's who I am Gail, it's what I am. Right or wrong, I can't change that." He found his identity in these values and concluded that though he wants to, he cannot change. These values define him and define his future. He is like the hero in a Greek tragedy.

Values are important and play a role in crafting identity. But they can be changed. We can change. We may say, like Carlito, "I can't change," but Jesus breaks our paradigm. He breezes like a breath of fresh air into a stagnant room, replacing stale odors with a sweet scent. If we allow him to come into our lives he causes us to become new creations (2 Cor. 5:17). With new life comes the potential for new identity, identity in Christ. It also brings new values. We come to embrace the values of love and humility, mercy and joy, from Jesus. Change is indeed possible.

De Palma brings an exciting climax in the Grand Central Station with a gunfight that brings flashbacks to his earlier classic, The Untouchables. As much as we want Carlito's way to bring him the success he desires, his way is impossible. Jesus' way is far better than Carlito's way.

Copyright ©2009, Martin Baggs