For Your Consideration...

For the Christian, charity is the common form of the virtues, directing everything to the love of God and neighbor. In our culture, by contrast, the common form of all we are and do is entertainment. So much so that Neal Gabler, in his book Life: The Movie, refers to our polity as “the republic of entertainment.”

And if we live in a republic of entertainment, then tonight’s Oscars Awards Show is akin to the night of the presidential election, when the American People hunker down in front of their television sets to find out which political celebrity won, and then, like the crowds that swelled Grant Park after President Obama’s election, bask in the glory of the freshly-crowned paragon of all that is good, true and beautiful in American life.

Like presidential elections, too, the Oscars are fueled by money, power and parties, and come at the end of an exhausting and ever-lengthening “race” characterized by spin, posturing, name-calling, and all kinds of media silliness. Consider the following reply by New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis to a question posed on the page of the Times’ new Question & Answer feature on the movies:

Q. What do you think accounts for the seismic shift from the total dominance of “The Social Network” on the awards circuit to “The King’s Speech” replacing it as the front-runner over the last few weeks?

— Marina Fang, Pittsburgh

MANOHLA DARGIS The idea that “The Social Network” was ever an authentic front-runner for best picture is a nice idea and a total media fabrication. Every year entertainment journalists, aided and abetted by movie publicists, try to spin some kind of drama out of what has become an interminable “awards season.” The journalists do their part because, especially after the critics’ groups and guilds have doled out their tchotchkes, there isn’t much left to say about movies they’ve already covered ad nauseam. But the machine needs to be fed. Happily for them, the movie companies are furiously working to capture the imagination and, they hope, the support of the only people whose opinions actually matter here: the some 6,000 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Two easy ways to stir up interest and trouble are to locate a villain (as in late 2001, when nasty chatter about “A Beautiful Mind” oozed into the mainstream) or create a media-friendly slugfest, as with last year’s trivializing battle of the exes (Kathryn Bigelow versus James Cameron).

Dargis might as well be talking about a presidential election. But then again, it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish between election season and awards season, or which of the two dramatic entertainments has more of a hold over the public imagination. 

In Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business, playwright, screenwriter and director David Mamet has the following to say about the Oscars. It comes up as an aside in the midst of some withering remarks about blockbuster films, a good swatch of which is worth quoting:

There is a relationship of mutual exploitation fostered by the creation and marketing of the solely mercantile film. Someone said that the genius of the American tax code was that it turned everyone into a sneak and a criminal. Mass-market exploitation of the audience makes the producer and the viewer complicit in an adoration of wealth—the producer trying to mug the viewer, and the viewer submitting for the cheap thrill of the producer’s notice. In this, the viewer is in the same position as the star at the Oscars: he agrees to fawn and pant in return for a pat on the head. This is, of course, the reason for the Oscars’ success as entertainment: the audience gets to see their oppressors brought low. It is like Boxing Day, when the lords of the manor had to pretend to serve the servants (121-22). 

What Mamet has to say about the mutual exploitation involved in the selling of the “solely mercantile film” may well be true. But I think he’s wrong about the media lollapalooza the Oscars has become. For the Oscars’ audience does not tune in to see their so-called oppressors, the filmmakers, “brought low.” No, for the audience of the Oscars, the filmmakers, and especially the stars, are like the winning political celebrity, representative of all that is in human life thought to be good and best—or, more familiarly, cool.

Try a different analogy. The Oscars are like Homecoming Weekend in high school, when the King and Queen are paraded before their fellow students at half-time of the big game. Their coolness may indeed exert an oppressive force over the more socially backward. It may indeed invite jealousy and resentment and ridicule (“Did you see that hideous dress she’s wearing!”). Moreover, that coolness may be rejected by those confident enough, like Mamet, to walk away from the whole scene. But still, there’s a huge audience that can’t take their eyes off the King and Queen, for in all that coolness is the almost irresistible demand: you should be like us.    

And yet…

For all the hype and hilarity of presidential and other campaigns, sometimes a little justice does get done. And so it is with the Oscars. Tonight, in the midst of all the self-congratulation and moral and political grandstanding, there will nonetheless be recognition, to one degree or another, of genuine craftsmanship in the art of filmmaking, and of films that depict what is truly worthy in the human spirit. For that alone, the Oscars deserve a look in.

   

  

Make 'Em Laugh!

One thing implicit in the 2011 Arts & Faith Top 100 Films is that nothing truly human is alien to the faith. As Steven Greydanus acknowledges in his commentary, many of the films on the list make no overt connection to the faith—any faith. Not that I see this a problem. However it may be for other faiths, Catholicism has always recognized that grace builds upon, rather than destroys, nature, so that films that portray truths about human nature, even without explicitly connecting those truths to the faith, can be viewed as “preambles” or “parables” of the faith. Thus it is perfectly appropriate to find on the list films that bring to light mysteries of the human condition other than religious ones—films such as Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

That being said, expanding the scope of consideration in this way leads one to think of other films that might deserve a place in the Top 100. My first impression on seeing the list was how—shall we say, lugubrious—it was. Where are the comedies? I mean comedies in the straightforward sense—films that make us laugh. I see that M. Hulot’s Holiday (an inspiration for Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean), on the shortlist in the past, didn’t make it this year. There is one Woody Allen film, Crimes and Misdemeanors—a great film to be sure, though more of a dramedy than straight comedy. And granted, there are plenty of films on the list with comic elements, like Fiddler on the Roof. (Is Sullivan’s Travels a comedy—or social satire?)

But by and large, it’s a list heavy on the drama. No Marx Brothers, no W.C. Fields. Not even Chaplin made the list.

Don’t feel bad Charlie, Shakespeare and Jane Austen didn’t make the cut either. But Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing might deserve a nod, as might either the A&E version of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or the BBC/Masterpiece Theater version of Persuasion. (I don't think we need fuss that these films were originally made for television).

I wouldn’t mind seeing one of the Ealing Studios’ comedies on the list, whether Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Ladykillers (both starring Alec Guinness). Some might well argue for one of the Coen brothers’ dark comedies (Fargo or O Brother, Where Art Thou?), or a Pixar film (my vote would go to either The Incredibles, Wall-E, and Toy Story 3). Others will protest that any list without A Fish Called Wanda, or The Princess Bride, or The Court Jester, or Planes, Trains and Automobiles, or one of Peter Sellars’ Pink Panther films, or one of Hugh Laurie’s and Stephen Fry’s sublime turns as P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves & Wooster, is not a list worth listening to.

It may be said, “Of course all of these are funny. But they’re not great films.” To which I answer, “Why not? Is there some lack of artistry in them? Poor cinematography? Bad acting? Clunky dialogue? Arguably not—at least in some cases. So is it rather that the ridiculous is being judged less important than the dramatic? Yet isn’t the ridiculous just as human as the height of human suffering? Indeed, the ridiculous just is the height of human suffering, portrayed with an exaggeration (which creates a distance) that allows us to laugh at it.  

So I say we need one or two more big, broad comedies on the list—to remind us that we are also made to laugh.

  

When it comes to other kinds of films that depict the triumph of the human spirit or its tragic defeat, other films not on the list spring to mind:

Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V

John Huston’s adaptation of James Joyce’s famous short story, The Dead

Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront

Merchant & Ivory’s Howard’s End

Two adaptations of Evelyn Waugh novels: Charles Sturridge’s A Handful of Dust and the BBC/Masterpiece Theater version of Brideshead Revisited

I’m sure others will keep springing to my mind--and yours. But isn’t that the fun of attempting to restrict one’s favorites to a finite number?

Moreover, I can't claim to have seen many of the films on the Top 100 list, so a reshaping of my Netflix queue is in order. 

But to finish with the issue of outright religious films, was I the only one surprised to find Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ not on the list? However one feels about Gibson’s portrayal of the violence of Christ’s passion, it seems very odd to find it left out of a list of the top 100 religious films of all-time. 

2011 Arts & Faith Top 100 Films

Check out this list voted on by the Arts & Faith Community, a group associated with the journal, Image. Each film on the list is linked to clips and other extras. See especially this commentary on the list by Steven Greydanus.

So:

Anything surprise you on this list?

Is there a film you think belongs on this list but isn't?

Is there a film on this list you don't think deserves to be?

I'm still pondering my answers to these questions and will weigh in tomorrow.