Inception - A Review

I went and saw Inception, Christopher Nolan's new movie about dreams, reality, and guilt. Ostensibly about industrial espionage, the movie quickly moves from the basic heist/fantasy/espionage format and gives the audience and experience like no other. The movie is fantastic.

Okay, it felt a little long at times and don't spend too much time trying to make sense out of everything, and other than Leo DiCaprio's character (Dom Cobb), the other characters receive scant attention. Was this oversight due to time, focus, or, was it intentional? I didn't care. Inception is the most gorgeous movie I've seen in a long while - and by gorgeous I refer to something more inclusive than the movie's look. This is a gorgeous and rich film that plumbs the depths of human anguish and scratches its way through human hope. "Take a leap of faith" is said by more than one character (or is it?) throughout the movie.

On to the main "plot." It has become typical for corporations to hire highly trained teams to "extract" information from people while they dream; it's a new form of espionage. The challenge for this team, and for its team leader, Dom Cobb, aka the Extractor, is whether it is possible to "plant" new ideas inside of people while they dream. Is it possible for a team to delve inside of a person's dreams so that upon awakening this foreign idea feels native, real, as though it were their own thought? The general understanding is that such a procedure has never been done successfully, even though Cobb says that it has. So, with Cobb's leadership, the team undertakes a mission to plant an idea in the heir to an energy conglomerate. However, the real plot is about Cobb himself - his demons, his fantasies, his realities, his regrets, his pain, his love, his hope, his disappointment, his sorrow - his need for redemption. Through the movie, he is working those things out. He is on a quest to "go home." So, really, the rest is just an environment for his story (although the movie's insistent continuity in following its own internal rules is a fascinating thing to watch).

Critics reviewing Inception make the obvious comparison to Memento, another of Nolan's movies, during which he began the screenplay for Inception. And, it isn't far off the mark to see a little of The Matrix here, too. In the sense that this movie plays with reality and unreality, and dream versus reality, this is true, but Inception picks up on Momento's use of dream and unreality and creates something quite new. Momento pales in comparison to what Inception accomplishes. Nolan gives us a maze and we never know where we are or exactly where we are going, but I didn't feel "conned" (as some critics have felt). I trusted him to lead me on an adventure, and he did. It could be that the perfect reviews written early on skewed the experience for later reviewers. Perhaps the hype overshadowed the actual viewing experience. I think the movie lives up to the hype, but it does so in a sneaky way. While it will visually dazzle, in many ways this is an intimate movie. It wasn't made to be big. It does not rely upon FX for the sake of utilizing FX. Every movment, every visual, every scene goes to support the story.

During the last scene, you could hear a pin drop in the completely full theater where I saw it. The tension was palpable. And when the movie was over you heard audible gasps throughout the whole room and some shouts and applause. Simply put, that doesn't happen very often. It is visually rich and subtly acted. The screenplay, while very good, is a bit verbose and pedantic in the first third of the movie. The music, well, it will transport you. It's obvious that composer Zimmer and writer/director Nolan understand each other well. Zimmer composed the music for Batman Begins and The Dark Night, and you will hear influences from those scores, but this music was composed for this movie, and it is perfect. As an aside, the musical choice to use "Non, je ne regrette rien" was evidently made prior to Marion Cotillard joining the project, so, evidently the "La Vie en Rose" connection is coincidental. Weird, huh.

That's my review. If a narrative experience is more important than understanding, you may love this movie. I sum it up this way - a story about forgiveness, grief, and self-discovery wrapped inside of a sci-fi, fantasy, espionage, heist package.

Bones - The He in the She

This week Bones dealt with redemption thru transformation by using a storyline about a pastor who undergoes a sex change.

Have you seen it? If so, what did you think?

Watch the episode here.

Putting a Stop to Methodists' Coffee and Sweet Rolls - Colbert At It Again

Wear a Sweater for Mister Rogers

Fred Rogers, known to us as Mister. Rogers, would have turned 80 years old in March. In honor of his life and his work, people in the Pittsburgh area are invited to wear sweaters March 15-20. But why stop there? If you, like me, grew up with the wisdom and gentle presence of Mister Rogers and the crazy puppets and characters of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, you might participate in "Sweater Days" even though you live far from Pittsburgh - I think I will.

My only pseudo-encounter with Fred Rogers occurred in the late 1990s when Jonathan Kozol was speaking at my church. They were good friends. In celebration of Jonathan Kozol's dog's birthday, Fred Rogers send a happy birthday fax to my church. I faxed him back a hearty thank you from his friend.

It seems that dire news is all that we hear. From the environment to school shootings to the election, it is rare to hear about goodness. Fred Rogers was a piece of goodness. I want to remember that.

Grey's Anatomy Struggles with Faith

Last night ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" took a shot at exploring faith - why we need it, what it is, and what it does for us. While the primary story line was Chief Resident Amanda Bailey, her son, and her husband, each of the characters revealed something about their journey with faith.

Izzie Stevens wants faith in her skill - the same faith that she thinks Cristina Yang possesses. Alex Karev's lack of faith is challenged by a faith healer who recognizes how the pain of his childhood has robbed him of belief in goodness. Derek Shepherd loses faith in Meredith Grey but gains faith in himself which frees him to look for new possibilities in life. George O'Malley is confronted with the faith of his religious tradition and how his actions have fallen short of its expectations. Cristina Yang moves beyond her blind belief in skill and extends emotional and spiritual care to Bailey's injured child. Callie Torres speaks to her belief in love even though she has lost faith in many of her traditional religious beliefs. Other characters also muddled in the faith story this week as well.

Faith as belief that we belong to a larger story is a fundamental part of Christianity. It is also what seems to characterize most religions. We belong to a story that neither begins nor ends with us - a story that pulls us through the singularity of any moment into a future as yet unwritten. As Christians our story tells us that life is stronger than death and that love is stronger than despair and hate. I am surprised that a soap opera like "Grey's Anatomy" didn't' reduce faith to a list of dogmatic professions or supernatural events.

Last night's episode was called "Lay Your Hands on Me." You can watch it streaming online or via iTunes.

looking for purpose and meaning

Recently a parishioner told me that she thinks people don't attend church because people don't really have a deep spiritual hunger. Her reflections (and she's a generation older than me) didn't seem to reflect what I see going on in the world, especially among the people of my peer group. As I listened to my parishioner, I couldn't help but think about the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last week and the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this week. Stories like these - and all hero quest stories - seem to be tapping into a great spiritual hunger. I see people looking high and low for meaning and purpose. What I don't see, though, is the church helping in these quests. We have become so entangled in doctrinal disputes (often about what I would consider non-essentials), embroiled in clergy sexual misconduct scandals, and engaged in political conflict that the effort required of people to participate in our church communities isn't worth exerting...at least for the non-churched people I know.

As I listened to this parishioner, once again I realized that there exists between the "Boomer" generation (I hate generational nomenclature) and Xers/Millennials a great divide. One of the differences between these generations is that Boomers believe in their own agency/power to change the world and the Xers/Millennials maintain skepticism of this ability. However, it seems the younger generations hold a hope for our skepticism to be dispelled. When I look at the prevalence of television shows, movies, and books like Heroes, Lost, Kyle XY, Harry Potter, X Men, and many, many others I see a generation searching for meaning in existence and the power to change the world. We want someone to tell us that change is possible and that we have some agency to bring it about. We are trying to find that iconic and archetypal story to which we can cling and from which we can find empowerment.

As a Christian I believe that my faith is grounded in a story of the greatest import. It begins with a people with no meaning and no identity being claimed by the greatest of gods. This God leads them from oppression to freedom, charges them with a sacred duty to be a light to all nations, and calls the misfits from among them to bear again and again the word of this God. Eventually there rose a man who could embody the grace, love, and power of this God who lived among the people sowing seeds of change and nonviolent revolution. Because of his choices, his life, and his works he was killed, but the powers and principalities of this world still could not beat him. Death could not defeat him. Furthermore, my story tells me that the same power that coursed through his veins lives in mine. The same message of justice and mercy that he brought to the world needs to be brought today. The same power that raised him from the dead will raise the entire world, liberating all of creation from the powers and principalities that push down, oppress, ensnare, and disempower. This story is greater than all of the superhero stories and more empowering than all of the hero quest narratives.

Can the church regain our voice to tell this story? Can we leave behind the squabbles that hold us down? Can we re-present the gospel in a world that clearly does want a story not only to hear, but a story in which we all can participate? In essence, can the church be a place where people come in order to find purpose and meaning?

31 atheist/agnostic writers take to churches across seattle

In "The Stranger", Seattle's waaaaayyy Seattle-liberal, hyper-sexualized, sarcastic, ironic, and anything-that-pisses-others-off-must-be-art newspaper, 31 (mostly atheist) writers took to worship on the same day to see what all the buzz about religion is about. While you can tell that "The Stranger" isn't my favorite paper (I'm over their too predictable, too caustic, too self-involved writing), the article has some interesting reflections on what folks who don't go to church/synagogue/mosque experience the first time they attend.

What struck me most is that this group of hyper-hip writers found emerging worship insipid and high church worship just fine, although it still didn't do anything for them spiritually. They wanted to maintain their anonymity, wanted the church to be unapologetically church, and wanted the message to be hopeful. Read on...

sopranos: nothing's neat with art

Last night's finale of "The Sopranos" will disappoint many, confuse more, and delight the few. I began as one of the "more" and have been transformed into one of the "few." Refusing to buy in to mob fans' cries for blood, sentimentalists' pleas for a happy ending, and our national desire to have things wrapped in neat bows and tucked neatly away, David Chase, the show's creator who both wrote and directed the finale, cut to black in the midst of a scene filled with the mundane and dripping with tension. Wonderful!

Chase is known for saying that art should pose questions and defy expectations. He did both last night. Despite the gore, the violence, the naked women, the gratuitous sex, the language, and the morally pernicious behavior of its anti-hero, the Sopranos had me hooked. My loyalty only slightly waned in the over-long hiatus periods and haggles over contracts. What drew me and kept me hooked? This was art...undeniably. Its hyperbolic imagery laid to bare the American soul, albeit in exaggerated style. The show revealed the ironic relationship that many have between unethical public behavior and devotion to one's nuclear family, the disparities between what we feel (at least say we feel) and our unscrupulous acts, and our resistance to change despite our hearts longing for deep transformation. Thank God everyone isn't a sociopath like Tony Soprano, but we are quite often like Carmella, willing to deny the reality that is right before us because life's payoff is too seductive. It's Chase's genius that he could create characters so unlike us and yet so like us.

The show's art was evident in the last scene. As the tension mounted, we expected any one of several characters to kill Tony. The alternating tight shots and wide scenes kept us on the edge of our seat. Meadow's terrible parking drove my blood pressure up. And, just after a suspicious character heads to the bathroom and presumably Meadow's entrance into the diner jingles the bell, the scene cuts to black. I couldn't believe my eyes..."Where's the remote?!?" I was left, as was everyone, asking...Did the Soprano family have a mundane dinner discussing mundane things? Did we experience as Tony did his head being blown off from behind by bathroom guy? Did we just get a taste of how Tony feels every time he goes out in public, anxiety ridden and on edge? We aren't given answers. We are invited into the experience...and that's art, despite the naysayers all over the Internet crying foul who wanted this tied up in a bow. No bows with David Chase.

But why am I writing about this on my religion blog? Could anything have been less soulful than "The Sopranos"? I think the internal journeys of each character and the arc of the show as a whole contain great soul. I also think that this show has shown us the hypocrisy that exists in our culture. Just watch AJ's "concern" for the world as his dad dumps asbestos into wetlands, Meadow's concern for Italian-Americans because her dad's been hauled off by the FBI, Carmella's "moral high ground" while benefiting from Tony's lifestyle. And in the midst of it all, there are real and intimate struggles for wholeness by people who just can't see their way out of the life in which they live. "The Sopranos" was a great show, but more than that it was great art, inviting us into the lives of the North New Jersey mob, the home of Tony and Carmella Soprano, and into the moral quagmire of the soul.