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Reviews
What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (2004)
An unholy brew
Remember that line from another well-known movie, the best lie the devil concocted was to persuade everyone that he didn't exist? Truth is that one can find nothing more harming to one's soul than to be presented with a great many truths and interesting facts wholly and thoroughly distorted. Fortunately for this brew, its theosophistic underpinnings are so little subtle and idiosyncratic that this movie's intellectual and spiritual poverty should not fail to strike one from the very beginning.
Quantum physics is highly interesting stuff, worth much pondering and philosophical contemplation; the achievements of Heisemberg oddly echo those of his contemporary and compatriot Edmund Husserl; and by surveying the former's theories one feels that Quantum Mechanics can be seriously addressed by Transcendental Phenomenology, in a fruitful, compelling--but alas, difficult and not very entertaining fashion.
This is not, however, what happens in this film. The voyage of an anxious woman through quantum physics has a bizarre self-help twist that presents us in contemporary disguise with a rather ancient enemy: Gnosticism, or the conviction that a hidden, revolutionary scientific knowledge of a mystic sort will empower the knower to alter the essence of the world. That indoctrination in the heresy of Gnosticism, and not acquaintance with Quantum physics is the true purpose of the film becomes clear by the bizarre appropriation and attack on religion (especially Catholicism) on purely intellectualistic grounds. The change of grounds from limpid scientific and philosophic aims is so abrupt that one knows almost immediately that science, religion, and common sense have all been simultaneously sequestered so as to introduce and rally for the fluffiest kind of Spiritism and Mentalism in the market.
There surely are dire needs to the human heart. But we already know that these needs cannot be answered by theories--especially bad ones. So if you care either for your heart or for Quantum Physics, waste no money either on this picture or on the books that the talking heads obviously want you to get. If anything, hope that Marlee Matlin will put her sympathetic acting talents to true drama and avoid this woeful junk for good.
Helen of Troy (2003)
Sure it's not Homer, but so what?
I've been checking the comments on this movie, and it is good to find that at least some people do care for Homer's details. The mini is definitely not keen on historical details [z.B., the richess of Bizantium ...] nor on the Greek looks of the characters, and it almost cancels every reference to the Greek gods. It makes of Achilles a brute, of Hector a pusillanimous punk, of Odysseus a charlatan, and of Agamemnon a full-fledged bastard. It both skins and stuffs the Homeric tale and world where needed, and unfortunately it will not serve as a study guide for the Iliad.
At the same time, I am pleased that the makers of this movie made the valiant choice of doing fiction, not just re-telling. "Helen of Troy" has definitely unromanticized Homer, without depriving the viewer, however, of the truly Greek element in the whole affair--that is, the tragic. If one keeps an eye on this, then the mis-representations will become palatable, and each character will gather some 3D. The greed and cold-heartedness of Agammemnon, for instance, is superbly conveyed; or the fearful good luck of Paris, or the weakness of Menelaus, or the panic of Cassandra. Helen herself, especially, makes a fairly convincing character. The movie succeeds, one should say, in showing how each character is tainted with a sin of its own, instead of simply victimized, or dragged away by whatever is happening. The consequence is that, although not faithful to the original sources, and although unfitting for the Homeric masterpiece, the movie at least is reliable to a certain angle of the Greek spirit: those were not as happy times as we usually think of them.
The Magdalene Sisters (2002)
Astounding, but not perfect: A movie for all and for none
I have found this to be a compelling movie, in several ways. The viewer will be astounded by the realistic quality of this picture, which clearly conveys the pains of being confined in one of these church-run companies.
In short, the film is about three young ladies, stigmatized by the 1960's Irish society as "wayward" and in need of penance. To this avail they are confined by their own parents or superiors in these Magdalene laundries, ran by nuns and clerics, where they are to do "voluntary" tough manual labor, for indefinite periods of time. The brutality of their serfdom contrasts with the insignificance of their "sins": to have premarital relations, to flirt with boys, or to give birth to children out of wedlock. Progressively the script turns away from the pains of their labor and towards the decadent, unholy way in which "religious" characters behave.
It must be admitted that these actresses are praiseworthy in performing their roles masterfully and with tremendous skill--some of their characters earning the viewers' sympathy in spite of their being oftentimes detestable. In a sense, then, the movie escapes the typical "tales of woe" of victims and victimizers; everybody seem to have as much of both--pounding on themselves and on others--so that we are presented with a vivid picture of hell--rather than of purgatory.
Being a Roman Catholic, however, the point of the movie seems to me rather ambivalent. On the one hand I would encourage other Catholics to watch this film and the denunciation it makes, for history has proven time and again that what goes around comes around easily. Catholics, more than anyone else, should be wary of the abuses of power and the moral corruption of its clergy, and avoid at all costs to hide the sun with their hands. Also, as a religious person one could appreciate the paradox hereby presented, and which is not easily solved: as Augustine once said, "nothing good remains good when forced"--but also, as he said elsewhere, "all heretics should be executed"--hoping that if he himself went astray a severe, faithful church would "take care" of him. As the film shows, the line between taking severe measures for the right cause and ruining someone's life by taking away his or her freedom is seldom clear.
On the other hand, there is something repulsive and not believable about the movie, and not at all edifying--and this is why I cannot really recommend it to most of the people I know. In portraying the "tyrant" church which nobody knows, the movie shows a church that probably doesn't exist, presenting "religious" people that have absolutely nothing religious about them. Pressure is constantly put under the viewer's religious mores, oftentimes unnecessarily--as when one of the girls receives communion after having given the priest a blow job. In addition, every single nun and priest in the movie, without exception, is evil, whether in being petty, or greedy, or merciless, or sexually perverted. Their "religious" vocation is portrayed as the vocation of "being a jailer," or a "Capitalist factory owner," or even a "slave owner." Sister Bridget at some point claims that if she had not been a nun she would have gone to America and become a cowgirl--as if her "call" for life was that of rearing livestock anyway. On this score the film unfortunately falls flat on its face, being reminiscent to me of Nazi tales where all Jews per being Jews are evil. Such a merciless, unrealistic display of the religious life is utterly misleading, especially to those outside Catholicism.
Ggot seom (2001)
The imagery of hurting and healing
I recently saw this film in the Foreign Film festival of Brugge,and left it with the feeling of not having seen such a profound flick for a very long time. A pity that films of such beauty could not become more widely available. It asks, simply and plainly, a most human question, namely, whether there is healing to great tragedy and sorrow--a question with which, I believe, we are all eventually confronted--lest we are spiritless. We are at first presented with three women, each one of them having just undergone personal disasters of truly unbearable (although commonplace) magnitude. These three tragic heroes, brought together in a most unseeming way, set off to find Flower Island, a place where, it is said, all pains and sorrows are healed. Their search for Flower Island will not turn, however, into an adventure: Flower Island is not what you would call a magical or mythical place as such, but the endeavor yields its miracles in a most fascinating manner.
So what is Flower Island? It does not ruin the film at all for those who have not seen it when I say that it is found in the companionship itself, in the sharing of each other's toils, in the paradoxical giving of what we lack. In spite of how absurd and fragile human bondage is, in it we find the precious gift of healing, that allows us to go on living. As Aquinas once put it, in being a true good towards another we overcome our own sadness.
Finally, let me add that a superb--though tranquil and simple--plot is here framed with delicacy and taste. The tragedies of these three women are shocking but not obscene: they will definitely touch you, and yet not irritate you. The imagery employed is very convincing. By the end of the movie, I believe, the question that the film posits is answered in an honest and realistic manner, and this is what makes it so much worth seeing.