Underworld: Rise of the Hebrews?

This past weekend I went to see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. This film reveals the origins of the blood feud between the clans of vampires and werewolves or lycans. It is a prequel to the first two movies in the trilogy; Underworld and Underworld: Evolution. While watching the movie I couldn't help but be struck by parallels between this story and an older, more familiar and prototypical story....the story of Moses!

The elite race of vampires (Pharoah and the Egyptians) had enslaved the race of lycans (Hebrews). They were put to hard labor serving and protecting their masters. Victor, the leader of the vampires (Pharoah) rules with absolute authority.The first true lycan, Lucian (Moses), is born human to a captive werewolf mother (born Egyptian to a Hebrew mother?). Viktor spares the life of Lucian and raises him with certain privileges and limited freedoms among the vampires (Moses in Pharoah's court in Cecil B. Demille's Ten Commandments). He still must wear a collar that reminds him of who he is (In DeMille, Moses has a Hebrew blanket from his mother that reminds him who he is). But, in one scene Lucian takes off his collar and becomes fully a Lycan (In Demille Moses removes his Egyptian gold collar when he identifies himself with the Hebrew people).

Lucian falls in love with the Pharoah's, I mean, Viktor's daughter, Sonja (In DeMille Moses falls for Pharoah's daughter). Others have noted similarities between this film and Romeo and Juliet. A tension develops between his love for Sonja and his identification with his people (In De Mille Moses choses his people over his love for Pharoah's daughter).Lucian plots to free his people from their slavery (Go Down, Moses). Lucian saves Raze, who also helps lead the lycans (In DeMille Moses saves Joshua, who helps lead the Hebrews). There are no ten plagues, but the lycans are finally freed to the distress of Pharoah, uh Viktor. In a final confrontation between Lucian and Viktor, Viktor is drown in water, or so it appears (Pharoah and his armies are covered with the waters of the Red Sea).

The parallels may only be coincidental, but having been raised on movies and Bible stories I couldn't help but leave the theatre singing to myself....Go Down, Lucian.

Miss Potter: A Woman Ahead of Her Time

I finally rented the movie Miss Potter the other day. I was interested in the movie because Beatrix Potter was an artist, an independent woman in the Victorian age, and a conservationist. She was a woman ahead of her time.

Beatrix is best known as the author and illustrator of such children's classics as The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Her life straddled the 19th and 20th centuries. Born to a privileged family Beatrix she was raised by governesses and spent holidays in the Lake District in England, to which she would return to live in later life. Hers was lonely childhood spending time with her many animals, exploring the landscape, and drawing animals, flora and fauna from a very early age.

The movie presented Beatrix's mutton-chop-sideburned father, Rupert, as appreciative and encouraging of her artwork. In contrast her sour-faced mother, Helen, never really appreciated her art, even after she became well known for her books. She discouraged her daughter from getting an education. Her uncle tried to get her into the Royal Botanical Gardens as a student, but was rejected because of her gender. Later she became respected as a mycologist for her numerous drawings of lichen and fungi.

Beginning with The Tale of Peter Rabbit Beatrix wrote and illustrated 23 books, which have become the largest selling children's books in the world. Beatrix, a single woman, became independently wealthy. The movie focuses upon her relationship with her book publisher, Norman Warne. Her parents were dead set against her marriage. Norman died before they were able to marry.

Beatrix purchased a farm in the Lake District and lived there on her own. She began purchasing surrounding farms through her solicitor William Heelis in order to preserve the land from developers. They ended up getting married and she ended up with with 14 farms. After her death in 1943 all the land was donated to the British National Trust.

Here was a woman who kept drawing in spite of discouragements, was able to live independently, publish her works, was not boxed in by traditional women's roles, became knowledgeable through self-study and observation, used her wealth to preserve land, and lived a full and rich life. Beatrix Potter was a woman ahead of her time.

Doubt

This afternoon I went with my wife to see the movie Doubt. The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by John Patrick Shanley. It is set in a Catholic school, St. Nicholas in the Bronx, in 1964. The two main antagonists are Sister Aloysius (played amazingly by Meryl Streep), principal of the school, and Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman with another wonderful performance), the parish priest. Sister Aloysius is a hard-nosed, strict, pre-Vatican II, Old School Catholic sister.

She doesn't like Father Flynn, who is post-Vatican II, compassionate, sensitive, New School, nor the reforms he would like to bring to this stodgy, oppressive school. Sister James (played marvelously by Amy Adams), an innocent, believe-the best-of all-people teacher at the school, sees some incidents that may indicate an inappropriate relationship between Father Flynn and the school's first black student, Donald Miller. When she tells Sister Aloysius, hell (or heaven?) breaks loose. After Father Flynn explains things, she is willing to believe, for a while, but not Sister Aloysius. The good sister is from that point on out to bring Father Flynn down, even though evidence of child molestation is not clear and solid. There are doubts.

And watching the movie you are filled with doubts and questions. The movie begins with a sermon on doubt and ends with the doubts of Sister Aloysius. A sign of a good movie is that the audience experiences what the movie is about. In Doubt nothing is certain. There is subtley of word and symbol that points to one antagonist being right, then the other. Clues are dropped here and there leading you down one trail, then another, like a good mystery movie. You begin to sympathize with Father Flynn, then with Sister Aloysius. I wanted the movie to end with one person proved right and the other wrong (my preference was that the uncompromising Sister Aloysius be proven wrong), but I knew before the movie was over that to be true to its theme there would be no final certainty in the end.

This movie is not a simple morality play, nor a diatribe against child abuse by priests. It leaves too many questions, too many doubts. The doubts created by the story are not about morality itself, but about how moral certainty can be abused. And maybe it does call into question how power can be used to control and destroy others. I think. But, I'm still not quite sure.

W.

Last night my wife, Iris, and I went to see Oliver Stone's W., a biopic of George Bush. Since it was produced by an acknowledged liberal, I thought it was going to be even more of a Saturday Night Live caricaturized satire than it was. What I observed was that Stone portrayed Bush as a flawed human struggling to make something of his life. In that sense it is sympathetic as it reflects on Bush's journey from a hard drinking party boy to born again Christian to Texas governor to President of the United States.

A major theme of the film was the strained relationship between George Bush Junior and Senior. This was presented as a key factor in W's determination to enter politics, ascend to the presidency, and deal with Sadam Hussein. We see clearly Bush Jr.'s determination to finish the job with Sadam that he felt his father did not complete. No one will be surprised by the portrayal of behind-the-scenes deception and power brokering. That's old news.

Maybe that's why I, and Iris, came away from the movie feeling like there was nothing new here. We have seen this before, not as a personal story but as a story played out on political stage. For me the film was not so much a drama of Bush's human struggle to make something of himself under the looming shadow of his father as it was a disturbing reminder of 8 years of bad global politics, neglected domestic social policy, trickle-down economics, bullheaded unilateralism, premptive war, political powerbrokering, the grinding machinations of war and the dominance of right-wing religion and idealogy. This is the story that was being played out while a majority of Americans supported the war in Iraq, gave Bush high approval ratings, accepted the flag waving media's version of what was going on, and re-elected W. for a second term.

This film reminded me that it wasn't the death of 100's of thousands of soldiers and innocent Iraqi's that turned public opinion against George W. Bush Jr., who was struggling to make something of himself on the world stage and following what he believed to be a calling from God. It was the mounting loss of U.S. soldiers, the constant images of violence and death in Iraq on the media, the uncovering of lies and deceptions leading to the war, which many of us were aware of from the get-go, and now the collapse of the U.S. economy which has turned public opinion against W.

As a personal story one might see W. and be inspired by the human struggle and determination to achieve success. As a story that was played out on a national and global stage, it should be a cautionary tale of hubris, power, ideologically-driven politics, war, and deception.