Sideways: The Illegitimacy of the Mid-Life Crisis

The following review was originally posted on cinekklesia on June 29, 2005.

Several months ago, one of my co-workers described for me the concept of the "quarter-life crisis." It apparently affects those in their twenties, fresh out of college and disappointed with what life has to offer them. Perhaps those who suffer from the quarter-life crisis can't find an "acceptable" job and are forced to move back in with mom and dad until an offer comes along. Perhaps they do find employment but have become disillusioned with the mundanity of white-collar life, shocked that the real world is nowhere near as interesting as their summer internships or "service learning" gigs.

Of course, when my co-worker described this to me, I thought that the quarter-life crisis was merely another member of the psychobabble pantheon, a "condition" that really should be defined as mere frustration, disappointment, and unmet (unrealistic?) expectations — in other words, the condition known as life.

Perhaps those reading my words will agree with me, seeing the quarter-life crisis as nothing more than a narcissistic ploy from a spoiled, whining generation. However, Gentle Reader, will you join me in taking this further and in criticizing the concept of the mid-life crisis, a hallowed life stage in the American psyche? The mid-life crisis is not any more legitimate than its younger sibling, and its current manifestation is found in an even more self-absorbed generation.

Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) is yet another example of the mid-life navel-gazing endemic in the Western world. In this highly-acclaimed comedy, Paul Giamatti plays Miles Raymond, a middle school English teacher by day and aspiring novelist by night, who decides to take his friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), on a one-week bachelor's trip before the latter gets hitched. However, Miles doesn't plan for a week of frat-house lunacy; rather, he wants to take Jack on an erudite tour of California wine country with lots of high-end sampling and a couple of golf games on the side.

Jack, on the other hand, has other ideas. A washed-up actor who sees in his upcoming marriage a final "settling down" into a life of bourgeois respectability (his future father-in-law is going to reel him into the family business), Jack wants his last week of freedom to emulate the frat-house lunacy that Miles avoids. He wants to get liquored up and to copulate with any woman who'll give him the time of day.

Yes, we have in Sideways a classic "Odd Couple" dynamic. While I really cannot recommend the movie per se (especially in a forum such as cinekklesia), due to its extremely bawdy humor, full-frontal nudity, and graphic displays of sexuality, I should say, in fairness, that the dynamic between Miles and Jack is superb. For example, while Miles is obnoxiously verbose in his estimation of any given wine, Jack's opinion basically comes down to "I like it."

(A side note on Sideways: Anybody who has ever had to endure the long-winded digression of a food/wine snob will appreciate Giamatti's portrayal of Miles; he helps us to see such pretension as mere compensation for some perceived lack in the connoisseur's life. Interestingly, I have heard that many wine snobs were furious with Sideways because they disagreed with Miles' judgments of the various vintages that passed through his lips; apparently, Miles' sin wasn't snobbery, but rather, ill-informed snobbery!)

The Odd Couple dynamic becomes particularly strong one-third of the way through the script when Miles learns that his ex-wife recently got married. At that point, he descends into a downward spiral, fueled not only by his depression regarding his ex, but also by anxiety over his manuscript, which is hanging by a thread at yet another publishing house. The mid-life demons haunt him as he examines the brutal reality of his four decades on Planet Earth: low-paid teacher, failed writer, failed spouse.

Jack, we learn, also has some major depression regarding his lot. He not only sees that his acting career is over, but he comes to the realization that his fiancée is all that he has in life. He recognizes that his week-long fling with a vineyard employee is ultimately stupid, and he is desperate to prevent the woman he loves from ever finding out about his liaison.

So, what is wrong with this picture? Ultimately, the mid-life crisis suffers from the same malady as its quarter-life variant: they both rely on worldly estimations of value, and they both facilitate unrealistically high expectations. While suffering angst over one's past mistakes is not intrinsically wrong, the manifestation of such angst during a mid-life crisis is often skewed. Rather than lament (à la Ecclesiastes) how we have wasted so much of our lives in shallow pursuits, we often are dismayed at how little we have achieved in those pursuits. We lament how "little" money we have, how we have been surpassed professionally by others, even how our children have disappointed us (relative to others' kids). We do not grieve at the extent of our worldliness; rather, we grieve at how we have failed in our worldly pursuits.

Both the mid-life and quarter-life crises stem from Americans' unrealistically high expectations (and subsequent sense of entitlement). Because we live in a wealthy society and because we readily see the material accoutrements of our wealthy neighbors, we expect to live at a high level. Thus, Miles is dismayed that he is an unpublished writer, living in a cheap apartment, driving an old car. He fails to recognize that he has a roof over his head, an easy means of transportation, and even some cultural capital to throw around. He's not dying in some refugee camp in western Sudan. He's not ducking gunfire in a Haitian slum. He is, by most accounts, a worldly success.

I do not claim to be without guilt in this matter. I have spent the past several years undergoing my own cycles of quarter-life crises. Now that I'm 30, I have seen several of my friends surpass me in professional standing (and they probably will always be ahead of me in the rat race). However, I have come to the conclusion that such fretting on my part is not only worldly but also ungrateful and narcissistic. To dwell on my own perceived failures is both to ignore God's bountiful blessings in my life and to delude myself into thinking that others actually want to listen to me bemoaning my lot. Nobody really cares about that, and neither should I.

Thus, what Miles, Jack, and the vast majority of middle-class America really need is a swift kick in the rear and a reminder of Jesus' hard lesson in Luke 12:13-21. To focus whole-heartedly on worldly pursuits and then to lament our perceived lack of success through a contrived quarter- or mid-life "crisis" is ultimately a sinful enterprise.

A Talking Picture: Those Who Ignore History....

The following review was originally posted on cinekklesia on June 22, 2005.

If somewhere deep within your psyche, you have a yearning for PBS documentaries, particularly about history and geography, then Manoel de Oliveira's A Talking Picture (2003) is the film for you. Or, if you have an inexplicable desire to eavesdrop on long conversations between elite European women—with topics ranging from linguistics to the EU to the current state of Arab civilization—then this, too, is your film.

Originally titled Um Filme Falado, this Portuguese movie's first half focuses on the characters of Rosa Maria (Leonor Silveira), a historian at the University of Lisbon, and her seven-year-old daughter, Maria Joana (Filipa de Almeida). Both of them embark on a long cruise in the summer of 2001 from Portugal to Bombay, where Rosa's husband is stationed as an airline pilot. Rather than fly to India, Rosa decides to take the scenic route so that she can witness first-hand all of the sites that she has encountered solely in books.

The travelogue becomes an encyclopedic exercise as Rosa answers the very simple questions of her daughter ("What's a legend?" "Who are Muslims?"). We also get to hear trivia tidbits regarding such famous tourist sites as Greece's Parthenon and Egypt's Great Pyramids. The PBS-like feel is accentuated when Rosa and Maria encounter helpful locals and tour guides along the way, characters who provide them a wealth of supplementary information. This reminds me of the contrived "conversations" that one so often encounters in documentaries ("So, Mr. Docent, how did the Parthenon originally appear to the Ancient Greeks?").

Thus, a viewer has to enter A Talking Picture prepared for a lot of didactic information. There is no passive viewing here: you're going to "learn something," whether you want to or not. If you have bad memories of the day when your high school history teacher was absent and the substitute (probably the football coach) made you watch a documentary for the entire class period, then you might want to avoid this film.

The focus of the second half shifts from Rosa and Maria to three other passengers on the cruise: Delfina, Francesca, and Helena (Catherine Deneuve, Stefania Sandrelli, and Irene Papas, respectively). These three characters are famous women at the top of their fields (business, modeling, and singing), and their fame grants them a seat at the table of the ship's American captain, John Walesa (John Malkovich).

As mentioned earlier, the three women (+ captain) discuss a variety of contemporary topics. What makes their experience surreal is the fact that each person is speaking in his/her own language: English, French, Greek, and Italian. They all understand each other perfectly and for the most part, feel no need to translate or to speak in a language apart from their own. Until the viewer gets used to the conversational dynamic, he/she may feel disjointed and confused. It is like witnessing Douglas Adams' vision of the Babel fish enacted in our own time.

So how do these plots intersect? On a subsequent evening, the captain, who has taken an interest in Rosa Maria and Maria Joana, invites our initial two protagonists to his table, where Delfina, Francesca, and Helena have become regulars. Upon doing so, the conversational dynamic changes: none of the three elite women understand Portuguese, and so they all must revert to English, today's Lingua Franca.

What is Manoel de Oliveira trying to say here? Is he possibly making a comment about his native country? Does he feel that Portugal, once a dominant colonial power, has become a marginal part of the European project, an outpost on the western tip of the continent? In her role as historian, Rosa Maria has studied the other women's languages, but they appear not to have granted her tongue the same courtesy.

More broadly, is de Oliveira making a comment about the marginalization of history from the European conversation? Throughout her tour, Rosa Maria demonstrates a breadth of cultural understanding that seems to elude the three elite women. While the latter are not oafish or uninformed in their views of the world, they seem to lack the nuance and sensitivity that grace our historian's perspective.

One suspects that de Oliveira's casting decisions consciously or unconsciously sought to reflect the above dichotomy. The historian is a relatively young woman, while the three elites are middle aged and past their prime. The historian, of all people, is shown exuding youth, vitality, and intellectual curiosity, qualities that seem to elude the more powerful, yet ossified, arbiters of the European status quo.

Where does the United States fit into all of this? If John Walesa represents the American voice, then the U.S. comes off as a puzzling creature. On the one hand, "America" is the captain of this global ship, steering the world by its sheer size and might. However, Malkovich portrays Walesa as slightly clueless; even though he can understand his European passengers on a conversational level, he appears to remain outside of their mentalité, not fully understanding them on a cultural and psychological level. He is like a prop: the passengers will interact with him because he has administrative authority, but ultimately, his only purpose is to steer the ship; nobody wants to develop an actual relationship with him.

So what does de Oliveira want us to learn from his exercise in didactic conversation? Oddly enough, the DVD jacket does a good job of sizing up A Talking Picture on a thematic level: it is an intersection (clash?) between history and contemporary events. As the final scene makes clear, it is not by coincidence that this movie takes place just a couple of months prior to 9/11. Oliveira seems to castigate European elites for not developing a more in-depth, nuanced view of history and the so-called "Clash of Civilizations" between Western and non-Western cultures. He also appears to fault the U.S. for steering the global ship blindly, ignorant of what the world thinks of it and its policies.

In terms of portraying "Big Themes" surrounding European culture, identity, and politics, A Talking Picture is not nearly as powerful and aesthetically captivating as Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors" trilogy—Blue, White, and Red—which floored me when I first saw them ten years ago. However, A Talking Picture is a worthy comment on our times, if you're willing to sit through the fact-heavy travelogue. If nothing else, you'll be prepared for your next round of Trivial Pursuit!

Top 5 Fluffy Films

The following "Top 5" list was posted on cinekklesia on June 22, 2005.

In my review of The Terminal, I lamented the film's lack of fully formed fluffiness. It essentially was a fluffy film, but it tried to make itself into something more with "paeans to overworked themes and trite heroes." Rather than happily (and securely) accepting its lot as "just" entertainment, The Terminal tried to "say something," and in the process became contrived, annoying, and not at all fluffy.

What, you ask, is a fluffy movie? Simply put, it is one that has no discernible theme, message, or lesson; it is a movie that seeks solely to entertain, a movie that is comfortable in its shallow pandering to the basic (though not necessarily base) levels of our aesthetic lives. Whatever themes exist are mere projections of the viewer's repressed anguish and desires.

While many, if not most, fluffy films are "bad" to "mediocre," we can find a few diamonds in the rough, a few steer that rise above the herd. I humbly suggest the following for your consideration.

5. The Bourne Identity (2002) - Dir. Doug Liman

Normally, good fluffy films fall within the comedic range, but occasionally, an action movie can make the cut. In The Bourne Identity, Matt Damon plays a super secret agent who wakes up with amnesia...and therefore doesn't remember that he's a super secret agent. Nevertheless, other agents want him dead, so he's got to start putting the pieces together quick. His supporter/confidant throughout the film, Marie Helena Kreutz, is played by the very cool Franka Potente, star of the brilliant (and not at all fluffy) Run Lola Run and The Princess and the Warrior.

4. The Thin Man (1934) - Dir. W.S. Van Dyke

Who says that accidental discoveries only happen in the science lab? I stumbled across this jewel while intending to rent The Third Man. The Thin Man follows a wise-cracking husband-and-wife detective team, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. The dialogue is racy, both in speed and content—okay, it's racy by 1930s standards, but the script has plenty of the ol' nudge-nudge, wink-wink to go around—and the movie is perfect for the serious student of fluffy cinema, one willing to dig deep within the archives.

3. The Blues Brothers (1980) - Dir. John Landis

I was living in the Philippines when I first saw this tribute to a great American musical genre. A mere lad of five or six years, I managed to impress upon my brain a memory of one of the most famous scenes from this film: the nighttime car chase inside a shopping mall. The other famous car chase, of course, is an early morning race on the streets of Chicago, involving the two protagonists (Jake and Elwood, played by John Belushi and Dan Akroyd, respectively), dozens of police cars, and what seems to be the entire Illinois National Guard.



Oh, the plot: Jake and Elwood are two blues musicians who have to reunite their band for a charitable concert to benefit their old orphanage. This movie has all that you need for a fun, fluffy evening: funny lines; great musical cameos from the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker, and others; and, of course, lots of mangled vehicles.

2. Ocean's Eleven (2001) - Dir. Steven Soderbergh

After developing a reputation as a "thinking" director, Steven Soderbergh decided to relax a bit with a remake of a Rat Pack classic. Apparently, the original was pretty awful, but Soderbergh's version is witty, funky, and intriguing. George Clooney plays Danny Ocean, a con man fresh out of prison with the proverbial "last heist" on the brain: namely, breaking into the high-tech vault of a Vegas casino and making off with millions. Clooney heads an ensemble of (mostly) Hollywood heavyweights that will leave you feeling very entertained (without have been intellectually edified one bit!). The sequel, unfortunately, is not nearly as good.

1. Clerks (1994) - Dir. Kevin Smith

Knowing that it has been over ten years since I first saw this film makes me feel old. Nevertheless, Kevin Smith's take on the minimum wage employees who serve behind the counter of your favorite convenience store is as fresh today as when I was in college. Bawdy, obnoxious, holding no sense of decorum (and not for the faint of heart), this film embodied the apathy, cynicism, and self-absorption that stereotypically defined the '90s. In a way, Seinfeld was the calmer, cleaner sibling of the riotous, long-haired Clerks. Not that Kevin Smith had any social message to impart; before he got all sentimental, he was just having a good time.

Airplane! - Yeah, It's Stupid

This review was originally posted on cinekklesia on June 8, 2005.

The fact that Airplane! (1980) was judged the 10th funniest American Film by the American Film Institute shows how hard it is to judge good comedy. Airplane! beat Good Morning, Vietnam, This is Spinal Tap, and [gasp!] Raising Arizona? Yet another example of the scandal of popular criticism.

To be fair, I actually laughed pretty loud at this "classic" directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. And I have to admit that I laughed hardest at the off-color jokes (I'm bad). And it's true that this movie's one-liners do not reside solely on the juvenile level (like some other films I could mention). Nevertheless, Airplane! loses steam about half-way through its repertoire, and it begins to remind you of the annoying guy who tells the same joke over and over. Literally.

Surely you can't be serious.

I am serious...and don't call me Shirley.

Plot? Basically, Airplane! is a parody of 1970s disaster films. Starring an ensemble cast of former Hollywood heavyweights (e.g., Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack), it recounts the tale of a Transamerican Airlines flight headed to Chicago. The pilot, co-pilots, and a large number of passengers contract deadly food poisoning and need prompt medical attention. Since the crew is out of commission, everything rides on Ted Striker (Robert Hays), a former fighter pilot who suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder associated with the death of his fellow airmen during The War. He must break free from the demons of the past in order to save the passengers; prove to himself and others that he has what it takes to be a regular, functioning member of society; and win back his love, Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty).

The plot, of course, is beside the point. No time is wasted by Abrahams, Zucker, and Zucker as they throw in deadpan one-liners, gags, and off-color references at a furious clip. At some point, however, knowing that the movie would last only 87 minutes, I lost interest and started to bide my time quietly until the credits rolled.

Why is that? Contrary to popular opinion, good comedy is an intellectually demanding endeavor for both the performer and the audience. It relies on layers of historical and sociological context and functions at its apex when producer and consumer "are on the same page." That's why Seinfeld was so popular in the 90s. That show didn't create cynicism, irony, and sarcasm, but it successfully reflected the sentiment of its time. Seinfeld wasn't about "nothing" as was commonly assumed; it was about urbane, unattached twenty- and thirty-somethings living lives of social and cultural plenitude. Seinfeld, in short, was about its audience.

Successful stand-up comedy (a rare phenomenon) also works under the same logic. I recollect hearing David Letterman crack a cheap joke about (I believe) Monica Lewinsky several years ago; he followed up with a wide grin, a shake of the head, and the statement: "Oh, no, we're not proud." It was a brilliant moment because Letterman and the audience were in perfect synch. He told a cheap joke, the audience knew it was a cheap joke (but liked it anyway), he knew the audience knew that it was a cheap joke, and on and on. By adding the "we're not proud," Letterman indicated that (a) he knew what the audience was thinking and (b) he was willing to deprecate himself in order to continue the laughter. Producer and consumer were in harmony; they had bargained for an optimal comedic price.

Airplane! ultimately falls flat because its jokes lose resonance. Since the strength of comedy lies in its historical and social context, Airplane!'s decontextualized gags can carry it only so far. In addition, its use of cameo appearances by former celebrities like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Ethel Merman eventually will have no effect on future audiences (except in generating confusion — "Who's that guy? I guess he was some famous basketball player back then").

One final note: Comedy, humor, and laughter are rarely discussed among Christians. Besides the common pastoral refrain, "You know God must have a sense of humor because..." (a completely unjustifiable claim that only reflects the pastor's sense of humor), we really don't talk about whether comedy affects our faith experience (and if so, how).

As far as I know, the Bible doesn't provide much guidance. Flipping through my limited concordance, I see a scarce three references to laughter, two of them connected with God's wrath: "...a time to weep and a time to laugh..." (Ecc 3:4a), "The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them" (Ps 2:4), and "...but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming" (Ps 37:13). It is unclear whether God even has sense of humor; the closest one can come to such a claim is to say that (1) we have a sense of humor, (2) we are made in God's image, ergo....

These are questions beyond the scope of this review. However, as comedy is usually not given its due come Oscar time, humor is also a neglected aspect of the human condition when it comes to theological reflection — I challenge us to rectify this gap in our faith lives. It's just too bad that Airplane!, while superficially and temporarily funny, doesn't provide us much help.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Talking Back to Science?

The following review originally was posted on cinekklesia on June 5, 2005.

Perhaps art (or the experience of art) is destined to be a circular exercise, constantly reverting back to itself for re-interpretation. When I first watched Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), I was in a depressed state, and the movie touched off lots of emotional buttons, reminding me of my numerous relational failures. Having just watched it a second time, I now have some analytic distance, and my comments will reflect that (if I had written these words after my first viewing, you would have been forced to sift through a bunch of emotional blather).

So, how is this circular? First, let's look at the film. Jim Carrey plays Joel Barish, a man depressed by his bad fortune with women; he's so down and out on Valentine's Day that he decides to ditch work and take the train to a deserted beach town named Montauk. He has no idea why. Just a lark, just to get away. While there, he meets Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), a blue-haired free spirit who spends her days working as a "book slave" for the local Barnes & Noble (and who spends her free time drinking lots of hard liquor). Joel and Clementine make an odd couple, but they fall in love and subsequently spend much of their time shouting at each other (aah, the joy). (Note that I am twisting this plot summary for the sake of convenience; the movie is not nearly so sequential. When Joel and Clementine first meet and when they really first meet are actually...different events.)

During the first third of the movie, we realize that another party has entered their relationship, namely Lacuna, Inc., a clinic that promises to erase any memory of any person — of course, its assumption is that clients will want to erase memories of old romances, affairs, and even marriages gone awry.

We learn that Clementine has opted for the procedure so that boring, conservative Joel can be erased from her life. When Joel inadvertently discovers this, he also schedules an appointment so that the immature, impulsive Clementine will cease to exist in his mind. However, during Joel's procedure, his subconscious (or is it his conscious?) state realizes that he doesn't want to forget Clementine after all. Many good memories are wrapped up with the bad, and he's willing to live with the latter in order to save the former. Much of the film is a trip through Joel's mind, as he wages a neurological struggle against the medical technicians scouring his brain. (We learn that these technicians have their own host of issues regarding memory and erasure.)

The message of Eternal Sunshine is pretty clear. Namely, relationships are complicated, they have good and bad elements, and we learn from both our positive and negative experiences with loved ones. Since we cannot extricate only the negative bits of a relationship, and since our identities are defined largely by our interactions with others, then we do ourselves a disservice if we try to erase completely our experience with any given person. We, in fact, erase a part of ourselves.

(Thus, while I would have preferred to erase my previous depressive state—when I watched this movie for the first time—Michel Gondry would remind me that such a state makes up a small part of who I am; erasing it would prove ultimately detrimental. Hence, the circularity: I had my own little "Eternal Sunshine" experience while watching Eternal Sunshine!)

In a tangential way, this movie also touches upon new scientific realities coming down the pike. This past week, I was listening to a radio interview with scientists who recently published an article regarding the neurobiology of falling in love. They argued that our initial experience of "love" affects us neurologically in the same manner as hunger, thirst, or drug "addiction." Their data stem from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) performed on subjects who self-claimed that they were in the midst of romance (i.e., they were unable to stop thinking about their beloved).

As neurology marches forward, it appears that there exist fewer mysteries out of reach. If we can explain love on a neurological level, then who needs poetry? What's there to ponder or discuss? We just need to look at the data. It appears that after its relatively brief fling with post-modernism, the Western world is moving back to its Enlightenment mold, one in which science becomes the dominant public language and where mysteries are not sources of wonderment but mere problems to solve, hurdles to overcome.

Lacuna, Inc., embodies this trend: bad memories do not have to be sources of emotional pain or existential questioning; rather, they are mere problems (annoyances, really) to be eradicated so that we can go on living the lives we were "meant" to live: happy, productive, always forward-looking, never wasteful.

Joel Barish, however, points us in a different direction. Even though neurology can explain why he's feeling so down and even though it can offer him a relatively easy solution, he decides that he would rather take his chances with the messiness of relationships and the pain of bad memories. His choice mirrors what many of us probably will face in our own lives. There is nothing inherently wrong with knowing how we function neurologically; however, what actions we take with that knowledge will have to be decided through prayer, Scripture, and purposeful reflection. Neurology perhaps can tell us "what is." What should be done lies beyond the MRI.

A Question of Governance

Today marks the start of Live 8, the international series of concerts aiming to (1) raise/maintain awareness of the socio-economic plight of millions of sub-Saharan Africans and (2) to pressure members of the G8, meeting next week, to address issues of aid, trade, etc. While I admire the concerts' organizers for their good intentions, we seem to forget the fact that many of Africa's problems stem from corrupt, inefficient, and thuggish governments.

Freelance writer Melinda Ammann has written a concise overview of this issue in her review of Robert Guest's The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives [ignore the silly ads to the side of the review]. For a more specific example, check out journalist Bill Corcoran's update on—and prescription of sorts for—Robert Mugabe's brutal regime in Zimbabwe, currently displacing the poorest citizens of its country from their makeshift homes.

The best action that the G8 can take is not to pour aid into countries where such assistance is likely to be stolen or misused for politically corrupt ends; rather the G8 should free up agricultural trade with Africa. Unfortunately, both American and European leaders remain beholden to domestic agricultural interests that continue to demand market-distorting subsidies — subsidies that are inexcusable from both economic and moral perspectives.