The Wild Things of God

Spi-Fi masterpiece

Okay, I’ll be honest. I really didn’t like the Matrix movies that much. I tend to prefer my science-fiction a tad more coherent, and I really like to see more colors than just black, gray and brown, and more than three hours’ worth of plot and character in seven hours of screen time. But here I’m not concerned with whether it’s good sci-fi, but if it’s good spi-fi, and yes, the Matrix trilogy is very good spiritual fiction.

The Matrix story stands apart from the mass of other virtual-reality movies like The Thirteenth Floor, Existenz, Vanilla Sky, and others by consciously making spiritual connections. Its spiritual symbolism is so evident in fact, that even a pubescent vid-kid entranced by the techno-dazzle might give a few thoughts to what it means.

The Matrix of delusion

This saga, whatever its weaknesses may be, is a profound analogy for spiritual awakening. Enlightenment teachers such as Vernon Kitabu Turner and David Oshana sometimes use it in their teachings. “The Matrix” is the world that all but a few humans are experiencing—the world that we all know, with its ups, downs, distractions and rewards. It’s not perfect, but that’s life—the world simply is the way it is, right?

Not quite. Neo Anderson, our hero, learns that this world he’s known and accepted all of his life is a façade, a massive virtual reality program designed to control humanity. The deception of the Matrix shelters people from the terrible truth of their real existence, which is horrible beyond words. People are kept caged from birth in pods, grown by machines for the purpose of powering the machines that really rule the world—an unending hell in which there simply is no human intelligence in control at all.

Good thing it’s just fiction. Right?

Or could it be that we do live in a façade? That we are not in control, but from birth, we’ve been programmed relentlessly by our culture to do what the culture wants, to be persons not in God’s image, but in society’s? Could it be that our defense mechanisms, mechanical reactions, and institutional machinery is what really runs our lives? Is the product of our personal fears and collective ego a machine-mind which powers itself by keeping us ignorant throughout our lives? Is the human condition simply powering the mechanisms that keep us bound in darkness? Is there help?

How can we wake up? This is the ultimate question. The Matrix portrays the desperateness and misery of our ignorance with a punch. We’re not awake. We’re living in dream-world, fueling the mechanisms of our own delusions. We need to wake up. Who will show us the way?

The hero-savior

Zion is the only city of free people remaining. However, the “Real World” is not very pleasant. The hundred thousand or so people who have been taken out of the illusions of the Matrix are losing a desperate war against the machines (the spiritual battle against the forces of delusion). Morpheus (named after the god of dreams) rescues Neo from the Matrix and brings him into the Real World, believing him to be “The One,” the savior who can end the war and save mankind. Neo also meets Trinity, whose love symbolizes the love of God. Together, the three work on freeing mankind by going into the illusory world to wake up others and find the machines’ weakness.

Neo is the most-discussed savior character to appear in recent cinematic fiction. Neo is both Greek for new as well as an anagram for one which underscores his Messianic title: The One. Anderson literally means “Son of Man,” the title Jesus used in the Gospels. Neo not only typifies Christ as the Savior, but also the Buddha as the Awakened One.

Like the Buddha, when Neo becomes aware of the enormity of human suffering, he devotes himself to training so that he will have the power to go into the Matrix without succumbing to the illusion. When he becomes truly aware of the falseness of the Matrix, he can see the “agent programs” who seek to destroy him simply as the machine code they really are.

However, like Christ, he manifests superhuman powers as he realizes his own true nature in both the Matrix and the Real World (spiritual reality). It’s interesting that the story actually shows two Resurrection scenes. The first one, which takes place at the climax of the first film shows the divine point-of-view; when Neo dies within the Matrix (our world), Trinity (in the Real World) brings him back to life with a kiss, symbolizing Christ being raised by God. The climax of the third movie is another Resurrection scene focussing on the human point-of-view of the Resurrection. In the Matrix, he voluntarily allows the satanic Agent Smith to kill him, and his sacrifice floods the false world with a glorious, purifying light. The result is that everyone still captive in the Matrix now has the choice to either enjoy a beautiful illusion (free from the agents) or to awaken and live in true freedom. Simultaneously, conscious people in the Real World enjoy divine peace, and the machines can no longer threaten them.

The Matrix’s myriad religious images are mostly Christian and Buddhist, but there are other elements in the mix. Although Zion is a city of about a hundred thousand people, its worship is tribal—a wild, sensual dance galvanizes the people as they prepare to face the battle that may destroy them. It’s one of the most interesting scenes in the trilogy, and a sad reminder that our modern religions have lost almost all traces of primal earthiness. Neo and Trinity’s lovemaking in the background pictures a restored human innocence as well as the spiritual lovemaking of God and the soul in Christian mysticism.

Chris Seay points out in The Gospel Reloaded that The Matrix is particularly consistent with the Gnostic movement in early Christianity, which emphasized the inadequacy and falseness of this world, with the need for enlightenment or awakening, (which they called gnosis. “knowledge”). Other Gnostic elements are the Oracle (Sophia, divine Wisdom) constantly urging those who call on her to look within for the Truth, and the Architect (the Demiurge), the deceptive spiritual force which keeps the massive illusion in place.

What The Matrix doesn’t show is the Reality beyond the “Real World”: the hidden splendor and unity of all things in God. Instead, it offers an original and powerful lesson on the urgency and challenge of living in true freedom: You are in the Matrix. It’s time to wake up.

images ©1999, 2003 Warner Bros.

A Christian sex comedy

A different kind of sex comedy

Hollywood often receives criticism for the morality (or lack thereof) it portrays in movies, and few are more notorious than that odd creation of the past few years, the teen-oriented sex comedy. However, 40 Days and 40 Nights is an interesting and unexpected twist on the sex comedy genre. It’s not about teens and it has abstinence (temporary, at least) as its theme. (It’s been done before; Aristophanes’ Lysistrata comes to mind, but that was 2500 years ago!)

Not surprisingly, 40 Days and 40 Nights is a far different story from Lysistrata. The concerns are modern, the issues more serious, and the setting is-somewhat, at least, Christian. Christian?! A Christian sex comedy? I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that I’m joking, but 40 Days is about the sexual angst of a young man in San Francisco, Matt Sullivan, played by Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down), who happens to be a Christian, although his faith is far from control of his life. Matt has suffered a devastating breakup, and like many people (Christians included), does not know how to regain his grip on life. An early scene shows Matt in a confessional, describing that he feels he’s falling into “a black hole.”

Matt longs for love, but like many people, he settles for sex. His breakup with Nicole has left him floundering, and he covers his pain with sex, using weekly sexual flings as a drug. After six months, the meaninglessness is beginning to take its toll, and the “black hole” of his addictive behavior is leading to a crisis.

Matt visits his brother (a Catholic seminarian) at church on the first day of Lent and has a revelation: Since this is the start of Lent, the season of repentance, self-examination, and sacrifice to identify with Jesus’ temptations in the desert, he will give up sex for Lent. Not just “sex” alone, but all sexual activity, period: hugging, kissing, pornography, self-gratification. (This actually is the course of treatment used by sex-addiction 12-step groups.)

Having made a sacred vow, Matt steps out of the church feeling peace for the first time in months. A heavenly light shines on him, Jesus smiles at him, and Mary gives him an approving wink. And Matt is going to need all of this grace, because his vow is suddenly going to become very tough to fulfill: he is about to meet the woman of his dreams, Erica, (Shannon Sossamon, A Knight’s Tale). Furthermore, it’s quite an understatement to say he does not get any help from his friends: in fact, they begin betting that he’ll fail, which leads to some hilarious scenes.

An honest portrayal of religion and sexuality

Although this isn’t a “religious” movie per se, it has some of the most natural religious conversations I’ve ever seen in a theater, including talking about Jesus. There once was a time when the name of Jesus couldn’t even be mentioned even in “religious” movies. (Remember Bing Crosby as a priest in The Bells of St. Mary’s and Going My Way? There was little mention of God, and Jesus was completely unmentionable. In fact, in the latter movie, the priest actually had to say “Santa Claus believes in you” as a euphemism for God!) In 40 Days, Matt, his parents, his brother, and even his roommate talk freely and comfortably about their personal lives, from God and Jesus, to romance and sexuality.

This willingness (at least at the beginning) to treat the spiritual and sexual sides of life together is the most original aspect of 40 Days. We are all simultaneously spiritual and sexual beings, and many of us live in some degree of tension between the two. Due to the relentless “sexual evangelization” of society, young people (like Matt) are increasingly choosing to consider their bodies’ urges before moral teachings, and often (like Matt), experience severe and needless suffering because of it.

Another difference of this movie is a willingness to treat the light and dark sides of sexuality simultaneously. Matt’s parents describe their satisfaction with their sex lives and consider it a gift of God. On the other hand, there is an illustration of the danger of confusing sex and love. When Erica, who can’t conceive of love without sex, tries to seduce Josh, who prefers to abstain, it causes him great anguish, and touches on the selfishness inherent in creating that pressure. Other scenes show the entirely selfish attitudes of seduction without love, and the violation of sex without consent. The difficulty of celibacy within the Church also comes up.

. . . with a formulaic ending

Yet in the end, 40 Days not only shies away from its initial challenges to a sex-obsessed culture, but gives in with a vengeance. I would’ve loved for it to end with Matt taking Erica to church on Easter Sunday, but our friends in Hollywood weren’t feeling that adventurous, and unfortunately the actual ending undercuts almost all the potential which came before. That said, it still is one very funny movie. (One technical oversight: the director doesn’t seem to know that Lent is the period from Ash Wednesday to Easter. The festive decorations in the church for “the first day of Lent” weren’t appropriate to Ash Wednesday. And though Lent is called the “forty days,” it actually is forty-six days long.)

(A slightly different version of this review is mirrored on the Hollywood Jesus website.)

Movie stills © 2002 Universal Pictures.

I wasn’t the first out the gate to go to The Passion of the Christ. But of course I wanted to know about it, so I asked everyone for their impressions as they saw it. Almost unanimously, the answer was: it was very moving. And true enough, it is moving. I cried at several points, and I think someone would have to be either completely closed to it or else made of stone not to shed a tear. It’s a powerful film.

As well as having emotional power, Passion also remains strong from beginning to end, unlike for example, the CBS Jesus mini-series which started off with a bang and then deteriorated to a frantic succession of stock religious images. It’s also much more evenly directed than Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth. The first two-thirds of Zeffirelli’s near-masterpiece truly were masterful, but Zeffirelli’s directorial skills foundered in his Passion sequence, and Robert Powell’s Jesus suddenly shifted gears to seem like a stoned, blue-eyed alien visitor to planet Earth.

A dispassionate Passion?

Nevertheless, I found the Passion somehow unsatisfying. Its emotional effect comes from three sources: brutality (and brutal it is), a sweeping, haunting, and moving score, and the viewer’s own faith.

That last part is crucial. Of all the Jesus films I’ve seen, Gibson’s Passion does the least to give any context or interpretation to Christ’s suffering. We aren’t shown why Jesus choose the path to the Cross, what he taught, how he impacted the lives of his disciples, his miracles, nor his radical message of universal and unconditional love. The emphasis is strictly on the Passion (the word originally meant “suffering”) of the Suffering Servant. Christians bring with them the necessary context for the film to be meaningful, but some non-Christians who see it may well see little more than an unbearably graphic depiction of a man being tortured to death. This probably accounts for some of the controversy around this film.

To be fair, Brother Mel does use several flashbacks (brilliantly, BTW) to try to give a taste of who Jesus was. While they’re well done, these scenes feel almost like afterthoughts. A shame, too, since they show so much missed potential, and left me longing for more. There’s a shot of Jesus falling as a child, and Mary comforting him. A short sequence of him working as a carpenter. And two or three more very short flashbacks of him teaching are all that we get. More flashbacks, and longer, could have made this far richer.

Show us enough of the Sermon on the Mount and his relationship with his disciples to realize that this Godman is proclaiming something incredibly revolutionary, and previously unheard of—to love—not just friends, but enemies, too! To rejoice not just in good times, but during slander, violence and persecution to ourselves. That the Kingdom of God is here, and all who love are part of it! That message is just as unacceptable today as it was 2000 years ago, (to Christians and non-Christians alike), but that is the message he taught and lived. Interspersing an unhurried and sensitive portrayal of his message with the brutality of the Via Dolorosa could have been much more moving and meaningful.

A Passion for the age of Fear Factor

Passion is almost unbearably violent for those who haven’t become desensitized to violence. Is it a case of wretched excess? Some find it too much, some don’t. Count me with those who did. The Gospel writers didn’t want to relive the torture and brutalization of the Lord—the accounts are succinct, anyone familiar with Roman scourging and crucifixion didn’t need (and certainly wouldn’t want) the gory details on precisely how mutilated his skin became. On the other hand, most of us now are ignorant of the terrible whips the Romans used, as well as the slow agony (often over days) of suffocation by crucifixion. However, having read The Passion of Christ from a Medical Point of View a couple of times, I can say that simply imagining the horror in my head was more effective. Watching the violence spelled out on the big screen (for well over an hour) seemed gratuitous and offensive.

Subtlety, understatement, letting the viewer’s mind fill in the details—nuance is becoming lost in modern cinema. We’re becoming a bit more like the Romans, we relish grossness, we want to see blood and guts. If the age of Fear Factor needs a Passion film to shake the most jaded viewer, this is it. Is it necessary? Maybe for some. But just as with the loudest note in a symphony, or the brightest color in a painting, the hardest-hitting effect in a film should not be over-used.

Creativity and literalism

Jesus films have generally come in two basic genres, the literal and the creative. Jesus of Nazareth, the CBS Jesus miniseries, and The Gospel of John are all prime examples of the literal kind, while The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Godspell are examples of the creative kind (which usually piss off conservatives).

Passion is almost exclusively literal. Gibson tried to produce it as realistically as possible, even going to the extent of having the Romans speak Latin and the Jews speak Aramaic. However, it’s baffling why he fails on very simple historical matters when he’s obviously put so much effort into historicity.

An example: the Latin the Romans speak is not the Classical Latin of the times, but Church Latin. While Church Latin is pronounced much like Italian, Classical Latin is quite different: veritas (truth) would be pronounced “weritas,” for example. Any Classical Latin scholar could’ve taught the entire cast the correct pronunciation in an hour.

I’m totally unqualified to judge the Aramaic in the Passion, but my hat is off to Gibson for doing it. Certainly Jesus and the disciples spoke Aramaic as their everyday language, and while the New Testament was written in Greek, its writers thought in Aramaic. There are simply dozens, if not hundreds of passages that make more sense when retranslated back into Aramaic or Hebrew than they do straight from the Greek. Lack of Aramaic studies is one of the biggest holes in contemporary scholarship. Anything which raises awareness of the importance of this vanishing language is helpful.

The costuming seemed badly off. The costumes of the Temple guards seemed almost impossibly heavy. Would anyone in a Mediterranean climate don what looks like 30 pounds of leather? Come on! And the Sanhedrin’s robes also pushed the edge of plausibility. The Romans’ armor looked more comfortable by comparison! (If you want to see superb costuming and sets, rent Jesus of Nazareth. In my opinion, no other director has even close to Zeffirelli in this regard).

Details of the crucifixion were also implausible. The nails go through Jesus’ palms, and he strangely carries a cross shaped very differently from those of the other two who were crucified that day. It’s a Christian cross! And Calvary now is a mountain towering hundreds of feet above Jerusalem, which would make crucifixion a pretty arduous punishment for the Roman soldiers themselves. Let’s face it, they were brutal and efficient; it’s said that Pilate crucified thousands during his rule in Palestine. Again, Zeffirelli’s depiction of ready scaffolding just outside the city seems so much more right than Gibson’s.

Some have charged the film with anti-Semitism. I can’t agree, although it is easy to why some Jewish groups were alarmed. To emphasize his agony as much as possible, Gibson gives us beatings that are never mentioned in the Bible, and here we see Jesus beaten to a pulp by the Temple guards before the Romans even see him. But on the other hand, the Romans have far more screen time being nasty than the Sanhedrin and Temple guards, and there is an abundance of reminders that all of Jesus’ followers were Jewish. For heaven’s sake, they’re speaking Aramaic! Probably the biggest cause for this perception is that the baddies, whether Roman or Jewish, greatly overact. There are times when the characters around Jesus look more like the leering maniacs in the Hieronymous Bosch painting “Christ Carrying the Cross” (see picture) than officials and soldiers.

What might have been?

Sometimes the literal film dares to do something creative with the Gospel story: the CBS miniseries had Satan appear in a business suit, taking Jesus outside of time and space in the Temptation sequence. The final scene (deleted by CBS) showed Jesus alive in the modern world, playing with a crowd of children.

Mel Gibson has several of these creative touches as well, some more effective than others. A less effective example is the repeated appearance of Satan as a bald androgynous person in black, watching Christ suffer from the midst of the crowd. Much more effective is the all-too-brief Resurrection scene. It’s stunningly beautiful.

But my favorite shot in the film was something entirely creative and wholly unexpected: a raindrop falls like a tear from heaven and shakes the earth. It’s simply brilliant, and packs an emotional wallop far beyond that of the whippings and scourgings. That incredible scene made me wonder what Gibson is really capable of. What could he have come up with if he wrote a screenplay based on how he felt about the Passion, rather than how he thought it happened? Surely that would have been a masterpiece.

Movie stills © 2004 Newmarket Films.