Maggi Dawn » Film

TV Vicars and on-screen priests

maggi dawn — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:32:08 +0000

Su notes in the post below that there are some good screen portrayals of priests, to relieve the awful TV-Vicar image. She suggests two films with robust priest depictions:

‘The Godfather’ trilogy

Mystic River

To these I would add Gary Lewis’s

wonderful portrayal of Palmer,

the Chaplain in the trenches in Joyeux Noel (2005)

Bad on-screen vicars? There is vicar who is a spoof of the TV Vicar caricature in Emma Thompson’s romp of a kids’ movie, Nanny McPhee. My son has his impression of this simpering Vicar down to a tee – but then he also asks me why they put strange vicars, not "normal" ones, in stories like that (this the child who has grown up amid an assortment of pretty normal people who are also priests).

What are your favourite good and bad on-screen portrayals of priests, ministers etc?

Joyeux Noël

maggi dawn — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:37:10 +0000

Al last I have seen Christian’ Carion’s imaginative re-telling of the story of Christmas 1914 in the trenches, when French, German and British troops met in no-man’s land to sing and play football. Carion adds lots of imaginative development to the historical detaisl fo the story, and certainly the British don’t come out particularly well in his telling, although his condemnation is more for the hierarchies, and his most poignantly made point is the profound difference in the experience of this war between those who strategised in offices and headquarters, and those who fought on the ground. I thought a three-language film would be a bit too Brain-stretching, but in fact it’s not hard to follow at all, and part of the charm of the movie is the men from 3 nations trying to understand each other.

It was fantastic to see a REALLY positive image of a priest on screen, beautifully played by Gary Lewis (who was also brilliant in Billy Elliot).

French review: English review:

As it is in Heaven

maggi dawn — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 07:27:02 +0000

A movie to see. Link: Colourful Dreamer: As it is in Heaven. Hat tip to AKMA.

Da Vinci Code Dr Seuss style

maggi dawn — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 18:25:22 +0000

I would not watch it on TV,
I would not watch on DVD.
I would not watch on VHS,
I would not watch on CBS.

I would not watch it in a car,
I would not watch it in a bar.
I would not watch it with my dad,
I would not watch it when I’m sad.

I would not watch it in my bed,
I would not watch with my friend Fred.
I would not watch it on a box,
I would not watch it shown on FOX.

I would not watch it on a table,
I would not watch when it’s on cable.
I would not watch it in a chair,
I would not watch it anywhere.

I wish I had not paid eight bucks,
This movie really really sucks.

Hat tip to Ruth: Weblog – Ruth Gledhill – Times Online: Dr Seuss-style review of Da Vinci Code.

Da Vinci Code

maggi dawn — Wed, 24 May 2006 11:52:00 +0000

I was thinking of blogging on this.

A N Wilson, in his customary style, has neatly macheted the whole spin into a pile of shavings with his column in the Observer:

"I think it’s absolutely brilliant of Sony to have made this fifth-rate thriller into a great international controversy and make everybody feel as if they need to be having conversations about it. This was one of the most tedious films I’ve ever seen. It was supposed to be a thriller but it told you what the answer was to start with. There was gratuitous violence, especially involving the mad monk, but no build-up and no suspense. It simply hopped from one four- or five-minute adventure to the next.

Also, it is blatantly anti-Catholic at a time when we’re all trying to learn to be more polite to one another. It’s fairly easy to imagine what would happen if it were about the holy prophet. All the cinemas would be in little heaps of ash by now. I wasn’t in the least offended, though. I just thought that it was silly."

And as far as church reaction goes, Real Live Preacher has said all I wanted to say. The extremists in the Church have already guaranteed the success for a number of productions that is disproportionate to their artistic merit, either by denouncing them, or by attempting to use them as "evangelism" – Jerry Springer the Opera, for instance, or Mel Gibson’s Passion. I shall probably go and see the movie of the Da Vinci Code as it will save me the trouble of having to read the book. Fiction is fiction. If it isn’t that significant, it won’t change the world. If it is, wake up and listen. Way to go, Gordon.

kiss hank’s ***

maggi dawn — Tue, 09 May 2006 20:58:43 +0000

satire on door-to-door salesman style evangelism. It bites. If you don’t like swearing you probably won’t like it. Hat tip to Richard

Pierrepoint

maggi dawn — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 13:53:00 +0000

A friend and I went to see this movie on Friday (and given that it was the first night, we were slightly astonished to see that the cinema wasn’t even remotely busy). It’s a film about Albert Pierrepoint who was one of the last Chief Executioners in the UK, resigning in 1956 only 8 years before the last executions took place. He was one of the quickest and most efficient executioners in history, and hanged more than 500 people in his lifetime. The film, despite its creepy subject matter, was focussed on Pierrepoint’s and his wife’s life (beautifully played by Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson). In the early part of the film the focus is on the Pierrepoint family tradition – that execution is the decision of the Courts, and the hangman’s job is simply to carry out the job with minimum distress to the guilty person, and to give them a dignified end. It is surprisingly touching, the way he treats these people with such tenderness. He then becomes something of a hero, when it becomes publicly known that he is the executioner in charge of the Belsen trials executions, and how the perception of him then shifts as later public opinion changes is viewed through his eyes, and the effect it has on him, his marriage, and his later reflections on capital punishment.

It’s also an elegant little study of a marriage in the war era – an affectionate and devoted marriage in which, nevertheless, there are conventions about what may or may not be discussed between husband and wife.

Definitely a go-see movie, although not on your own – you’ll need someone to hold your hand in the icky bits.

brokeback mountain

maggi dawn — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:34:59 +0000

Went to see this last night with a couple of guys from work. We were all agreed it was a pretty amazing film: we came out feeling a bit stunned, with lots to think about. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting from the write-ups; I was under the impression that the whole focus of the film was the grand passion at the centre of the story. But, a bit like The English Patient, although the story revolved around two people who fell in love, the film was much much more complex than that, the most interesting threads being the contributing factors to their love, and the consequences of it to themselves and to other people.

A few things stay with me 24 hours later. First, the film is absolutely beautifully shot. The very slow opening sequences with the sheep going up the mountain are absolutely fantastic – they look like a river flowing uphill. The fact that the first few months of the story occupy a disproportionately large amount of the film, and the gradual acceleration of time thereafter, cleverly places the life-changing significance of that summer for the two men.
One of the most poignant parts of the movie is the depiction of the rolling shockwaves that hit Alma when she discovers Ennis in a clinch with Jack. The way those scenes were shot and cut together were brilliant – you could physically feel her sick, gut-wrenching realisation that her whole life as she knew it was sliding away from her. The hollow despair that followed was tangible and poignant; she played the part brilliantly.
There have been some reactions against the movie because of its focus on homosexual love. I found the horror of the homophobic violence depicted in two scenes in the movie much more affecting – one in Ennis’s 9-year-old memory, the other in his imagination as he hears a "version of events" over the phone. Violence is always sickening.

Narnia and religious intolerance

maggi dawn — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:02:35 +0000

interesting essay here

The quest for the historical wardrobe…

maggi dawn — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:30:34 +0000

this little theological/Narnia joke cheered up my morning.