Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

First off, in case I forgot to mention this last week, I highly recommend the film Hotel Rwanda starring Don Cheadle as the Hutu hotel manager who, by using every personal connection and skill and resource he'd ever had or could lay hands on, somehow managed to keep over 1200 Tutsis from being murdered during the genocide in 1994. [None of what I just said should count as a spoiler for the movie, since it's all part of the public record and news accounts about that shameful period in our world history, which most of us are old enough to remember.] See this film at your earliest opportunity, and be sure to have at least a couple of tissues somewhere handy when you do.

Then, having finally accepted that I probably wasn't going to do any work yesterday afternoon, after I finished leading worship, I gave myself the entire afternoon to go see The Incredibles and a second viewing of Phantom of the Opera (without the intense bladder pressure which had somewhat distracted me during my first viewing in December!).

I can only be thankful that The Incredibles was still playing in at least one local multiplex when I finally got around to seeing it, because not seeing that film on the big screen would have been a sad omission on my part. I loved it! I couldn't believe how enjoyable and intelligent and funny and well-done that movie was! Brilliant!

Of course, I couldn't help but be made slightly uncomfortable at the depiction of "Buddy", the "Incredi-Boy"-wanna-be and self-described biggest fan of Mr. Incredible (who later turns from simple stalking to murder and wholesale mayhem). But then, I realized that "Buddy" was the kind of "fan" that other fans (real fans, like us!) also deplore and despise -- the kind whose need for approval from and total union with his idol(s) prevents him from having the slightest empathy or concern for the feelings or rights or Selfhood of anyone else on the planet. Plus, the "I-Wanna-Look-Like-'Heat-Miser'" hairdo is just too pretentious for words. Obviously, "Buddy" is nothing like you or me!

Even with watching the closing credits to the end, I still had almost 15 minutes between the end of The Incredibles and the 3:45 PM start of the previews before the next showing of Phantom, so I had plenty of time to redeem my voucher for a free small popcorn (my reward for accumulating 40 points on my 'club' card) in the lobby and make sure that, in fact, I didn't have any pressing need to use the bathroom before the next film started.

Seeing Phantom again made me realize that I must have been much more distracted by my urgent need to use the restroom during almost the entire movie the first time I saw it than I'd thought, because how else could I have missed so many things?

In particular, I somehow hadn't connected the fact that when Christine briefly came back to the Phantom in the end (when the first time through, both my sister and I -- who had never seen the stage version -- were sort of hoping that she'd somehow, impossibly, decided to ditch Raoul in favor of the "okay-he's-a-murderer-but-hey-who-doesn't-have-their-flaws?" Phantom) and took the engagement ring off her finger and pressed it into the Phantom's hand (the ring which Raoul had originally given her but which she'd never worn on her finger for him, which had then been appropriated by the Phantom and pressed into her hand as a symbol of his intent to keep her down in his lair forever, and which she'd symbolically donned just before she kissed the Phantom in order to show him he was "not alone" in the climactic confrontation a few minutes earlier), she wasn't doing so to sever all ties with him, necessarily (returning his ring to end their brief "engagement"). Rather, that non-verbal (and therefore possibly added just for the movie) scene could be read as Christine cementing her connection with the Phantom, even though she might never see him again in this life. After all, the ring was originally supposed to symbolize her commitment to Raoul, but if the Phantom could appropriate its meaning and press it into her hand as an attempt to signify his possession of her, then why couldn't Christine, in turn, use it in the same symbolic manner, to signify that in some way she'd remain connected to him, that he (the Phantom) had a part of her heart that Raoul could never claim?

Then, at the VERY end, when Raoul went to such trouble to obtain the Phantom's hand- or at least custom-made music box (which we'd seen in very rough form in the toy he'd made for himself in his childhood cage) and place it as a gift at Chrstine's burial monument, I was struck by the fact that Raoul was giving Christine a gift that had belonged to and was symbolic of his rival, the Phantom, rather than something emphasizing his own exclusive relationship with her. Meanwhile, the Phantom had apparently already been there and left Christine a gift (the ring) that had once belonged to and was in some sense symbolic of Raoul. It was almost as if the two men were merging into one, or at least acknowledging that they had always shared Christine's love and that each of them no longer begrudged the other the share of Christine's heart and life that had belonged to the other, rather than to himself.

Okay, enough procrastination for today. Back to work.

But first, one final obsessive-type question about an earlier guilty-pleasure movie starring Gerard Butler, namely Dracula 2000.

I'm still waiting for my sister, who owns the VHS version of this film and has seen it many more times than I have, to confirm or contradict my memory, but . . . I seem to remember that in Dracula 2000, when Dracula is talking about what Mary Van Helsing means to him -- how he's longed for 2000 years for someone like her, someone who is eternal like him not because she was bitten and turned, but because she was born that way -- he says something about having longed for someone "begotten, not made"? If so, I don't know why, on either of the two occasions when I've seen the film, I didn't connect that immediately with the words of the Nicene Creed (which, in the traditional English translation, places great emphasis on the fact that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, "begotten, not made", being of one substance with God the Father, etc.). Or maybe I'm remembering something that wasn't in the film at all. Maybe I'm just thinking that it would have been cool if they had used that wording in the movie, since it would have made the rather wild and woolly theological parallels between Mary and Dracula (a.k.a. Judas Iscariot), on the one hand, and between Mary and the role of Christ in forgiving Drac (or trying to get him to accept forgiveness), on the other hand, even more intriguing and subversive of the patriarchy.

Oh, well -- even if my world isn't the real world, and I'm remembering things that never happened, it's still a very nice place to visit, now and then!