The Happening

Posted on July 6, 2008 by me

In a recent post I promised to review M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie,The Happening, once I saw it.  I did see it a couple of weeks ago, so I’ll try to review it the best I can considering my questionable short-term memory. For those of you bottom-line type folks, I’ll give it a thumbs up.  For the rest of you, keep reading and I’ll tell you why.  Caution, there may be plot spoilers.

First, let me say that I chose the “thumbs up” rating style because it’s kind of like the pass-fail grading system for movies. So, in a pass-fail world, The Happening passed, whereas movies like Peter Jackson’s King Kong didn’t.  It’s not the best movie Shyamalan has made, but it’s worth seeing, if you don’t mind blood, gore or Zooey Deschanel.

Overall, the film didn’t seem to me to be as tightly directed as most of his other films. It also doesn’t have the same kind of controlled setting like The Village or The 6th Sense, and as far as I caught, he didn’t use the same color clues he used in those films.  It’s definitely a horror film, even more so than The 6th Sense. In a way, it kind of draws on the old monster movles of the 50’s and 60’s, without the giant bugs or spreading green slime. And, it draws a bit from Hithchock’s The Birds, with its random acts of unexplained terror, although The Happening isn’t as random as it first seems. The point is made twice in the film, a bit heavy-handedly, that no matter how much science can explain the hows and whats, there are things about nature that science can not tell us. I had read something that suggested Shyamalan was taking a sort of ID position in the film, but I don’t think that’s true. If anything, there’s a kind of pantheism or self-evolved consciousness suggested, but he avoids use of the word “God” in favor of “nature.”

One of the things that I loved about the film was Shyamalan’s weird sense of humor; in this way, as I’ve mentioned before, he reminds me of Hitchcock.  In a film with sometimes grotesque violence and extremely intense situations, there are some brilliantly humorous moments. Then, when your’re off your guard, well, you can probably guess…

In general, I thought it was a fairly well-done film. I liked the concept, and I think Mark Wahlberg did a great job as the lead. He seems to handle both intense drama and humor well, even in the same scene.  I didn’t even mind Zooey Deschanel, who seemed well-suited to play the distracted wife of Wahlberg’s character. There are some other great characters, as there are in most of Night’s films. I can’t say much more about or I’ll give too much away.

I think the film would have been much better had it not relied so much upon graphic violence. The scene of the man having his arms ripped off by wild animals was way too long and unnecessary, as are a few other scenes. It seemed almost that he felt obligated to leave that in, when the movie would have been fine – and I think better – without it, or at least a shortened version leaving more to the imagination. Sometimes, what you don’t see is worse than what you do; the old filmmakers knew that.  This is not a shock-film like so many cheap horror flicks are, but sometimes the focus on almost gratuitous violence seems to distract from the movie’s focus.

I also thought that the dialog in this film didn’t live up to the standards Shyamalan set in his earlier films, and he should have had a bit of help in that area.  Some of the dialog is classic Shyamalan, but sometimes it seemed too contrived.

Overall, I think it ranks as my least-favorite Shyamalan film (The Lady in the Water and The Village being my favorites), but I’m still glad I saw it. I’ll probably watch it again when it’s released on DVD.

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How do you know?

Posted on July 4, 2008 by me

As I’ve mentioned in past posts, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about belief paradigms and epistemology (kind of the same thing). To someone who hasn’t spent years questioning things, it probably seems like a silly thing to think about.  However, how we know what we think we know, and what we think we can know, is essential to a number of issues, including such apparently diverse topics as faith, science and even romance.

Think for a moment, those of you who are lucky enough to have someone love them. How do you know that you are loved? What is your criteria? Do you even need criteria? Is it just a feeling, or is your belief based on some rational analysis? What do you mean when you say that you love someone?

For at least 200 years we in the Western world have lived within a modern worldview. Modernism is essentially the result of the Enlightenment, when men suddenly realized that reason and logic were, well, reasonable and logical, and surpassed any other basis for knowledge. The ultimate reliance upon reason, combined with the questionable belief in progress (that is, the belief that change is ultimately for the better, and what is new is better than that which is old), is modernism in a nutshell. Modernists believe that science and technology improve the quality of life. Every problem is addressed in a reasonable fashion, and they take Aristotelian logic for granted.

Now, I love logic as much as the next guy, and sometimes even more. It’s a great tool. However, as I’ve studied a bit of history here and there, I’ve realized that not all cultures have thought the way that we do. For example, our concept of cause and effect, that doing this will always result in that, is a modern concept. Moderns see time as progressive – that is, like a time-line, moving from the past into the future. Ancient cultures tended to see time in a circular fashion, which is why the seasons took on the importance that they did.

Being modern, we presume that those illogical ancient cultures were wrong. After all, we know so much more now, and we have medicine and indoor plumbing.  We don’t worship the sun (well, some of us still do), and we don’t chant and wave dead chickens around. Instead, we do things like play the lottery or go to casinos even though we know (there’s that word again) that the odds are against us. And, we have indoor plumbing.

I’ve heard stories about modern missionaries encountering so-called primitive cultures, and being laughed at when they try to explain things in modern terms. To non-modern cultures, our cause-and-effect thinking is laughable, because they believe – and according to them, know – that things aren’t always what they seem. Quantum theories have also challenged some of that cause and effect thinking, especially when they do experiments that seem to show that the effect sometimes occurs before the cause, or that different effects exist simultaneously, up until the point they are observed.

So here’s the question: how do we know that modern logic is the best way – or even a good way – to think? The catch here is, of course, that we can’t use modern logic to comment on itself. How, then, do we know what we know?

Isn’t this fun?

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt, Philosophy | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Winds of change

Posted on July 1, 2008 by me

Quixote tipped me off to the new site, Disbeliefnet.com. You probably know all about Beliefnet, one of the oldest faith-oriented sites around. Beliefnet is all about faith of all stripes and tolerance of anything related to faith, providing a place where people with even crazy beliefs can find acceptance and dialog with one another.  It strikes me as a site for spiritual wimps.  Disbeliefnet, on the other hand, is a site dedicated to ridiculing any kind of weird belief that exists, and some that aren’t quite so weird. It’s a perfect complement to Beliefnet, providing a place for non-spiritual wimps to hang out. However, I think it is evidence of a new trend, a sign that a pendulum somewhere is perhaps beginning its back stroke.

Another bit of news that Quixote passed along is also advertised on Disbeliefnet: Bill Maher, the ex-host of Politically Incorrect, has jumped on the documentary bandwagon. His film Religulous, to be released on October 3rd, also ridicules the things that people believe in. Click on the link and you can see a pretty cool trailer.  Maher must have a lot of faith in his followers, as he’s got a film targeted at a very, very small audience, if you believe any of the poll data. Unless, of course, he’s hoping it will attract everyone, because we all – except perhaps for some of the beliefnet wimps – like to laugh at other people’s weird beliefs.

It’s true – I’ve laughed at things that you probably believe for years.  I’ve been known to make fun of Jim Dobson, TV preachers like Robert Tilton (who hasn’t?) and that lady with the pink hair. I’ve laughed at Pat Robertson, I’ve laughed at the Fool on the Hill, and I’ve laughed at people who believe they reincarnate into cows.  I also laugh at people who don’t believe anything, like Buddhists and atheists.  Laughter is what happens when your brain doesn’t know what to do with a particular bit of information that we’re trying to assimilate. And, medical research shows that its good for us to laugh, so we have some scientific basis for it.

But, let me tell you what Disbeliefnet and Religulous signify: they are signs that there is a change in the wind, that we are now entering a post-tolerance age.  That’s right, post-tolerance.  For the last few years, we’ve had liberals stuffing tolerance down our throats, and obviously, we’re tired of it.  People have become so afraid of offending anyone that they can only make fun of themselves. What fun is that?  We’re still allowed to ridicule public figures, of course, which helps a bit. Then there’s the Minority Rule, which says that if you’re a recognized minority, you can make fun of the majority, but they can’t make fun of you. I mean, get real. There’s more of us, so explain to me why we can’t make fun of minorities?

But, apparently it’s now fair game to make fun of anyone.  It was essental, of course, that this trend began with liberals, seeing as how the tolerance movement also came from the left.  The gauche have criticized those on the right all along for being intolerant, so for conservatives to be intolerant is no big deal. But, now that the left has come out in support of intolerance, it’s a different story.

Wow.  What freedom! Freedom of speech returns!  Stay tuned for more post-tolerance posts in the days to come.

Posted in Humor and/or Sarcasm | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

All this, and Heaven too

Posted on June 26, 2008 by me

I am in the middle of reading Bishop N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope, which deals with the doctrine of Heaven and what Wright calls “life after life after death.”  It’s blowing the minds of some evangelicals who don’t like being told that Heaven isn’t necessarily the goal.

I was quite surprised to hear that Bishop Wright was interviewed last week on The Colbert Report, a somewhat dangerous place for nearly anyone in which to find themselves.  In the interview, Wright dialogues with Colbert about Heaven, dogma and other fun stuff.  Check it out, Wright is on about the 13:30 mark. (And, Cookie Monster is a surprise guest earlier in the show!)

Posted in Church, Faith, Science & Doubt, NT Wright | 2 Comments