Why, perhaps, you should see Avatar.

I know all the good reasons not to.

Yes, the story’s been told before—and better—in Dances with Wolves. Lonely American serviceman meets beautiful native girl who opens his eyes to a new way of looking at the world and in so doing brings him into conflict with his own people. One of the strengths of Costner’s film is character development ; in Cameron’s film everyone screams “caricature” from the male and female leads down to the militaristic bad guy. Not since the old westerns of my youth have I seen a film in which it was so clear who you should cheer for and who you should boo as soon as he/she walks on screen as in Avatar.

And yes, I’ve heard the reports –  and been appalled by them!—of parents naming their children Neytiri (Avatar’s warrior-princess heroine), Pandora (the planet),  even Toruk , after the giant winged-steeds of the blue-skinned Na’Vi.  It’s like naming your kid Artoodeetoo or Ceethreepio.

And yes, watching Avatar does feel like eating too much junk food: it tastes good going down, but isn’t very satisfying. There’s a reason for this. Avatar’s unabashed nature-worship has already been round the block a few times in Hollywood in films from Star Wars to The Lion King. While pantheism’s box-office appeal has been proven, philosophically it’s still light beer, as Ross Douthat explained in his New York Times review:

Suspecting Certainty: 

a review of Doubt by  Greg Grooms

“Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.”

--Montaigne

How do you feel about people who are certain?  Do you find them attractive, admirable, encouraging? Or do you tend to suspect their character, their motives? How you answer the question may depend more on who you know than what you believe. Often the attractive-ness of certainty depends on who embodies it.

In the opening scenes of his play-turned-film, Doubt writer/director John Patrick Shanley shows us two very different faces of certainty. Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) is the very model of a fifties era conservative. “Every easy choice today will have its consequence tomorrow, mark my words,” she tells us and we almost believe her. Doubt takes place in 1964, shortly after John Kennedy declared “all encompassing, explosive change” to be “the motif of our time.”  One imagines Sister Aloysius voted for Nixon. Ironically she is also a strong woman in an era in which strong women simply weren’t welcome. As the principal of The St Nicholas Church School, she is lord of the fief, quick to make sure her underlings know it. 

Where have all the heroes gone?

A review of Valkyrie by R. Greg Grooms

Last fall my friend Adam was discussing The Counterfeiters with a German grad student, who asked, “Why is it you’re watching so many German movies?” While he paused searching for an answer, she continued, “But then, it’s not as if American movies are about anything, are they?”

There’s enough truth in her comment for it to sting a little. After all when was the last time you watched an American movie that dealt with an issue of substance? But like most generalizations, this one falls short, too.  Once in a while American movies are about things, important things like German history for example. And when a hefty dose of morality, sacrifice and heroism, is added to one, the result is a film like Valkyrie.

In 1944 a group of German Army officers attempted to execute Adolph Hitler, replace him as head of state, and sue for peace with the Allies. Most of us may be aware that such attempts were made, but probably aren’t aware of the details of the plan, nor of the character of those officers involved. Valkyrie fills in those blanks quite nicely. 

Redefining an Old Problem  

A review of Atonement by Greg Grooms

In The Death of Satan: How Americans have lost the sense of evil Andrew Delbanco puts a new spin on an old problem:

            "A gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the  intellectual resources for coping with it… The repertoire of evil has never been richer. Yet never have our responses been so weak.  We have no language for  connecting our inner lives with the horrors that pass before our eyes in the outer world."

The old problem?  The problem of evil, traditionally seen as philosophical in nature and defined something like this:  God is good and all-powerful, but evil exists. How can the reality of the latter be reconciled with the truth of the former? Despite the efforts of philosophers like Alvin Plantinga (see his God, Freedom, and Evil) fans of the problem of evil insist that its only acceptable solution is for God to disappear, this despite the irony that apart from God the concept of evil itself fades, too.