Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center

What do we do with unseen pain?  How do we adjust to cruelties we must bear alone?  What toll does resentment take from a person’s willingness to take another step, to live another day?  Will we accept that the destination to life’s highway may take us down back roads before we come back to pavement again?  When will we learn lessons right in front of us, waiting for application?  Bearing with pain, coping with searing loss, Robert Redford’s movie explains how to live the rest of An Unfinished Life.

Director Lasse Hallstrom (whose films include What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Chocolat, and Cider House Rules) digs again beneath the surface, exposing the history of lives etched with fractured pain.  The story rides along sentimental rails,[1] allowing Hallstrom to bring the train to station with little effort.  Yet it is sometimes simple sentiment that lifts us.  The ending may be formulaic but which of us hopes the finale won’t apply to us?

Viewers who understand abusive relationships will identify with Jean (Jennifer Lopez) as she seeks to escape one set of harms by running back to embrace old injuries.  Einar (Robert Redford) is an unyielding flint of a man reopening past wounds daily to bath in their depressive spirits.  Moral center in the cast is Mitch (Morgan Freeman).  Freeman’s role reprises other “learned sage” credits (Robin Hood, Sum of All Fears, Seven, etc.)  Bearing physical scars which ripple through his body, Mitch is able to look beyond the pain to spiritual release.  The subtle inroads only a grandchild can manufacture are paved by child star talent Becca Gardner as Griff, Jean’s daughter.  One would flinch to call Einar’s ranch a “home” to this rag-tag crew of misfits.  Key to all relationships is that of Mitch with Einar.  The restrained, yet forceful Western code of personal involvement in another’s life slowly soothes a raging spirit.  It takes the intrusion of old hurts, however, to make the healing process complete.

Einar lives with regret.  While the town has learned to live with Einar, Einar has yet to learn how to live with himself.  Unable, unwilling to cross over his personal anger, he wallows in the memory of a past that cannot be changed.  Ritualistically, daily Einar sits by a graveside, speaking to “What if?” instead of “What is?”  Guilt crushes spirit and sinew under the Wyoming sun but forgiveness has universal healing properties.

Morgan Freeman delivers a line in another of his cinematic triumphs, The Shawshank Redemption, whose application serves well here: “Either get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.”  Time will go on with or without us.  Human choice to overcome past pain is the only way to keep on living.  The lone question left to answer for the viewer is will we allow others to apply salve to places we cannot reach?

PG-13 for profanity, violence, suggestive dialogue, and adult situations.

---

[1] Mark Spragg, author of the novel An Unfinished Life, wrote the screenplay with his wife Virginia whose therapist background invades the script.  Thankfully, seasoned actors rise above easy-answer-pop-psychology to wrest redemption from the reversals of life’s wrestling match.

Ecklian Reviews: Gran Torino

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN

I hope Clint Eastwood never stars in another movie.  “Capstone” to a career is not a fair depiction of the credits due his name for Gran Torino.  For a man whose signature ideal throughout most of his film career has been justice, individual sacrifice to attain rightfulness is the ultimate exclamation point.  It has been a long time since I have been so smitten by a film or its lead’s performance.  Walt Kowalski (Eastwood), his Ford truck, Michigan factory neighborhood, and his American pride are not what they seem.  Like all of us, there is more to us than meets the eye.

I have heard and read the negative responses to Gran Torino.  They are all wrong.  Some have ridiculed the cast for its immaturity; newcomers who have no acting experience.  Balderdash.  Who better to play everyday people than everyday people?  Others are concerned that racial epithets spill into every scene.  Like those who want to quarantine Huckleberry Finn I have only one response: if you have no concerns over “Jesus” being a profanity in every scene, chill out.  Every racial group jilts every other, rather than a categorical repudiation of one specific ethnicity.  Still more do not like even the hint of vengeance: weapons are no answer to violence.  My response: y’all need to leave your gated communities.  And then there are those who think this a heavy handed sermon.  Those who think they are being preached to have not been reading The New York Times or The Washington Post who believe the last six months of White House press releases are to be taken as real news coverage.  I can’t help but think that Clint’s Libertarian political views rise closer to the surface in this movie based on these baseless attacks.  The fact that the freedom-loving, America-honoring Hmong People are chosen as his character’s foils speaks volumes.

There are no frills, only straightforward storytelling in Gran Torino. In some senses the facial snarl says it all.  Here is a man who has lived a long life, has deep regrets (not the ones we think, either), and bears the emotional scars of real battles.  He is impudent, unnervingly angry, and believes everyone else beneath him.  By movie’s end everyone believes that “crusty” was only a thin veneer.  This “hero” story has been told a hundred times before and we cannot take our eyes off the screen.  A well told tale will be vindicated by open wallets.  Gran Torino grossed $150 million in theatres.

What pleases me about Gran Torino is the “enveloping” of the story: the end goes back to the beginning.  The Church and Clint’s antipathy toward it drive the tale.  If one looks closely at the body of Eastwood’s work, there is sensitivity toward Christianity that should not be missed.  The verbal jousting between newly minted priest and uncooperative antagonist creates lesson after lesson.  Clint’s symbolic gesture in the climactic scene is a sober moment considering Eastwood’s past movie pedigree.  Dirty Harry, William Munny (Unforgiven), and Frankie Dunn (Million Dollar Baby) share their sense of justice with Walt Kowalski.  But as Walt says, “nothing’s fair.”  We need to learn that getting justice may only be won by giving ourselves.

Rated R for constant racial epithets, pervasive profanity, and violence.

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

When I was a kid I watched Snively Whiplash, the dastardly villain of Rocky and Bullwinkle, as he would endeavor to divert the train to another track, trying to ruin everyone’s day.  Snively’s appearance happens much too often in life for my taste.  Diversion from the track, displacement from the norm, is both metaphor and message in Rails and Ties.  Another successful directorial debut,[1] this time from Clint Eastwood’s daughter Alison, hinges on what we all know too well: our train can be switched to another track at any time. 

No character is spared a detour.  Marcia Gay Harden’s Megan, twice in remission from cancer, is attacked again.  Kevin Bacon’s Tom Stark has the job he loves wrecked by a suicidal mother.  Davey (played with brilliant emotions by Miles Heizer) is the son who escapes physical harm only to be left parentless.  And if life’s curves did not themselves manage a crash, each person sideswipes the other in their own relational derailment.  While some will only manage a trifling connection to Lifetime movies in their reviews, the pretzel twists seem too much like reality to brush off so lightly.  Important, too, is leaving the audience with the unasked but obvious question, “OK, what would you do?”  Movies that place the audience in plausible situations haunt the sensitive viewer who knows too well that life can veer off the track at any moment.  Harden takes us on a humanly earnest emotional ride for which she is to be commended.  Bacon has taken the track less traveled in the last few years of his career (The Woodsman, The Air I Breathe, Death Sentence) punching our collective tickets to see characters that exist but are all too often unseen.  Eastwood’s direction delivers the point: ties are necessary to ride the rails. 

Emotional ties are driven spikes into the storyline.  How will humans respond when there is nothing they can do to stop the oncoming train?  How do we manage to shift to another point of view we believe is right but goes against every experience we know?  How are family units connected when there is no “unit” to speak of?  How do any of us muster the courage to continue down the tracks when we’ve had previous encounters with that headlight in the tunnel?  Lesser films would cater to flimsy characterization and standard plotlines.  Not so Rails and Ties.  Redemption is absent.  What the audience does realize is that while we may have gotten off at the wrong stop, we are still able to jump the next train. 

Trains, no doubt, are a central character.  But the film is much more about diversion, being displaced from the tracks of life by outside influences beyond our control.  I think that the writers of those old cartoons wrote out of experience.  They knew that the damsel in distress would someday be us.  But we are never left alone.  Goodness and grace are born beyond our earthly boundaries: the tracks always run both ways. 

Rated PG-13 for brief language, adult situations, some peril, and brief nudity. 

---

[1] See my comments about directorial debuts in my review of Frozen River.

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

The Bells of St. Mary’s ring no more.  Half a century has passed since Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman demonstrated to audiences the redemptive nature of the Christian Church in the 1945 film.  John Patrick Shanley’s alternative perspective with the adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt, questions The Church by questioning its servants.  In an age where sex scandals have rocked reputations in the rectory,[1] casting doubt instead of dispersions is certainly understood.  Yet, the movie invites discussion of even deeper questions: Is certainty a myth?  Is authority abusive?   Should justice be blind?  Does perception trump reality?  Answers to these questions may be as elusive as the film’s conclusion in the actions of individuals or governments. 

Meryl Streep, arguably the best actress to ever walk any stage, plays the overpowering, overbearing Sister Aloysius Beauvier.  The nun strikes fear and (physical) pain into the young charges at her school as well as during Sunday morning mass.  Whether obsessed with the wrongful use of ballpoint pens or silence during meals until she alone rings the bell for interruption, Streep artfully directs the audience in their collective loathing of her character.  Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Father Brendan Flynn, a genial priest who captures the spirit of the progressive movement coming out of The Vatican in the early 1960′s.  The priest’s kindness juxtaposed with the sister’s austerity causes the barometric pressure to drop as warm and cold fronts collide.  

A novice teacher in the parochial school (Amy Adams) seeds the brewing storm with her sincere yet superficial behavioral observation.  It seems Father Flynn befriends a young altar boy.  Impropriety is suggested.  The young nun brings her information to Sister Beauvier whose suspicions are raised more by rancor than reality.  Confrontation between the combatants leave more questions unanswered.  Add to this lack of assurance the absoluteness of the young man’s mother (played by Viola Davis, who supersedes all other performances in this picture).  When the nun reveals her notion of sexual misconduct by the priest, a Catholic mother’s categorical obeisance to her faith, her race, and her son’s future is perhaps the most shocking revelation in Doubt. 

After Mother Teresa’s death, Newsweek dedicated a cover article to depict her doubts from, then, newly disclosed personal correspondence.[2]  Little noticed during her lifetime in the secular world, focus shifted to questions about her faith after death.  Perhaps it was this revelation that set up the last scene in the movie exposing the doubts encountered even by those most committed.  Surety is difficult in a generation nurtured by cynicism parlayed by the John Stewarts of the world.  If ever there was a need for evenhandedness in media, it is now.  However, Doubt should make the viewer re-examine their own personal beliefs based on insufficient evidence, perception, or group-think.  And all should hold the tension of their questions while they ring the bell for Truth. 

Rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic material concerning children. 

---

[1] http://www.npr.org/news/specials/priests/

[2] August 2007; http://www.newsweek.com/id/38603

Ecklian Reviews: Frozen River

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

“The baby is dead.”  “No it’s not.”  “Yes it is.  Just hold it close to your body.  Keep it warm.  We don’t want to give it to her cold.”  After discovering the child is alive Lila says, “It wasn’t me it was the Creator” and Ray, “All I know is K-Mart’s closed and I don’t have nothin’ for under the tree.” 

Motherhood: the dogged determination to the death that says I will provide for my children no matter what.  Life may hit me with its best shot but I will find a way through, over, around.  Flint-like resolve in her scared momma’s eyes, Melissa Leo’s Academy Award Nominated performance demands to be watched by everyone born by a mother.  Each scene is tension filled because every act of life is played on the precipice.  We are required as viewers to live on the ledge, to feel what it is like to scratch and claw for every piece of change making sure our kids eat lunch.  We will be asked to consider what we would do were we the lone decision maker in a household.  We will look face to face in the face of women who must face the world on their own.  And we are forced to look at our faces in the mirror of our own souls. 

Directorial debuts seem to produce soul-searching films (i.e., Alejandro Gomez Monteverde for Bella, Gavin Hood for Tsotsi, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck for The Lives of Others to name a few).  Courtney Hunt’s freshman project is worth thoughtful reflection and deep group discussion.  Frozen River takes the cinematography of daily life (think The Office) to create a world the common person knows: no makeup and no spectacular production designs.  Dollar stores and house trailer living are par for the course here.  Forget politics.  Fortunately, social commentary is no where to be found.  [Would that Hollywood would get the point: "Just tell the story."]  But we will be haunted for days after to consider what would we do were we confronted with . . . deadbeat dads, human smuggling, hand-to-mouth living, insufficient work, latch-key children, and credit card fraud.  An odd couple, Lila (Misty Upham) and Ray (Leo) find themselves joined at the hip through actions to which they must simply respond.  Two women from different cultures connect through their common humanity.  Even tribesmen and troopers are presented as compassionate beyond the normal Hollywood cut-out characters.  The frozen river stands as the metaphor, harboring either hope or peril. 

Were I to create a movie trailer, it would be the opening paragraph above, which makes no sense until you see the movie; which is what I want you to do.  We must place ourselves into the middle of a tunnel where an oncoming train forces us to make decisions these mothers make every day.  Lila and Ray both seek provision for children.  Their coupled, selfless deed mid-film makes every heart ache.  Acting to redeem a life or care that a child receives a Christmas present transcends personal interest.  Parental trauma cannot be reproduced.  Those who suffer in some way to care for children feel the pain of Frozen River, hoping for a thaw. 

Rated R for brief use of profanity and adult situations.

Ecklian Reviews: In Bruges

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN

 Hobbled by guilt yet bound by principle, the souls of men long for redemption.  One can rent any number of gun-fight thrillers that splatter the screen with blood (Shoot ‘Em Up, Smokin’ Aces) while enjoying comedic releases of tension.  Dark-comedy suspense full of bullets and mayhem (Lucky Number Slevin, Crank) are also available.  It is hard, however, to suggest a film quite like In Bruges for its dedication to all the above mentioned elements which have their foundations sunk into human shame. 

Bruges, Belgium provides a thousand year backdrop to the movie’s setting.  After a hit, two gunmen (Ray and Ken played by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson respectively) are instructed by their boss (Ralph Fiennes) to cool off in the ancient town.  Awaiting further instruction, Ken encourages Ray to enjoy the beauty and culture of the old European municipality.  Here viewers may find themselves wondering in the first twenty minutes of the movie “I thought this was a gangster flick!”  The elder Ken inspects canals, architecture, and the interior of cathedrals.  The connections to Catholic culture should not be missed as there is some unspoken connection to the church throughout the film.  

But what bothers the younger Ray, is much more than boring tourism.  After gazing upon an artwork depicting man’s eternal judgment, we discover that Farrell’s character is concerned about his afterlife.  The hit (against a priest, no less) has also felled a little boy with an errant bullet.  Ray’s conscience plagues him for the rest of the movie, because of this horrendous act: so much so that he intends suicide.  Layers of angst are peeled away as we find out Ken questions his own life’s work, having killed so many men.  Even the sadistic Harry has principles.  The reason for instructions for Ken to kill Ray is based on the bosses’ analysis, “We have to draw the line at killing little boys.  If I had done it I would have blown my own head off on the spot.”

Woven within the fabric of Martin McDonagh’s brilliant directorial debut is a cast of characters who deliver untold delights.  Jordan Prentice plays a dwarf, anxious to enjoy all life’s pleasures.  Clémence Poésy is love interest to Farrell’s Ray whose smile lights up the screen.  Add to this wonderful mix, a film is being shot within the city during the time of Ray and Ken’s stay which intermittently plays a role of its own. 

Comparisons of McDonagh’s work to the Coen brother’s violent comedic strains are not far off.  Yet underneath the ageless set design, haunting musical score, tremendous character development, and exceptional script the core of the movie resides in the inner struggle of human life.  Ray’s crying jags and Ken’s conflicted wisdom are at the center of us all, our desire to be good, while knowing goodness is impossible.  In the battle with our own sins, knowing we must die, we wish with Ray, “I hope I live, I hope I live.” 

Rated R for pervasive profanity, bloody sequences of death, drug use, and violence.