Reply to Topic
A clue to how the world is changing can be found in 2014's God's Not Dead. Godsploitation films are pretty square, earnestly so. But God's Not Dead has a serious edge to it, if you're paying attention. The wicked professor is not only defeated in his philosophical war against God, but he is completely broken down. His girlfriend leaves him, because she deserves better, and gets her groove on at a Christian concert. His student defeats him soundly in a campus debate, crushing his atheist worldview with facts and logic. At the end, he literally dies in the gutter of a rain soaked street in the middle of a storming night as cloyingly friendly pastors pray for him to accept God. Crying like a baby, in total psychological capitulation, and just before he draws his last breath, Professor Radisson accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He was too far gone for this world, but he had just enough store credit left for the next. God bless! Amen! Hallelujah!
In terms of literary form, this is not an unfamiliar pattern. We have face-turns and heel-turns, but if a heel was a real piece of work before the face-turn, he must die in payment for his sins. Darth Vader, for example, had to die at the end of Return of the Jedi. Just imagine an alternate cut where Luke gets Vader out of the Death Star relatively unscathed and parties with the Ewoks on the moon of Endor. Just imagine Vader talking to Han next to a victory fire, "Hey man, sorry about the torture and freezing you in carbonite, I was in kind of a phase" and then knocking back a sip of Budweiser. Or imagine him talking to Leia, "Sweetie, I am so sorry about Alderaan and the mind probe with the four inch needle. I had no idea you were my daughter. You look sooo much like your mom. Come here and give daddy a hug." And how many times did Loki have to die to expiate his sins? Familiar turf.
And so we come to 2021's Forgiven. Ralph Fiennes stars as his least likeable character since Schindler's List. His character, David Henninger, is a misanthropic, alcoholic, crass, cruel, and inconsiderate man who travels with his wife through the desert in North Africa to attend an elite party attended by a more unlikable characters. Also, he is rich, white, and male, so he's basically a demon. I'm not exaggerating. A character in the film flat out tells him that he is one in comparing menacing looking tribolite fossils (see below) to Westerners of his ilk.
The film splits its characters along lines of class and region. You have native Moroccan Muslims who are hopelessly impoverished, literally trying to scrape a living out the the dirt selling fossils or working as servants. And then you have super-rich white Westerners who embody the ugly American trope cranked to 11. They speak about "Arabs" while their Muslim servants are in the room. They act as if they were not there, flaunting drug use, infidelity, and consumption loads of food, most of which has to be thrown away. Rich Westerners are bad, mmmmmkay?
The central knot of the story is that David Henninger drives drunk to the party and runs over a boy trying to sell a fossil. The couple is more concerned with the inconvenience, possible police trouble, and spoiling the party than with the fact that they killed someone. Our characters have to be reminded, several times, that the boy was a person and that his name was "Driss." The father of Driss shows up to the party to claim the body of his son and insists that the man who killed his son come with him to bury him. Seemingly inexplicably, Henninger goes off alone with Abdellah to bury the boy.
Predictably, Henninger connects with the plight of the poor downtrodden Moroccans and finally comes to express genuine guilt and regret over the accident. Henninger and Abdellah come to a bit of an understanding and it seems that. The father comes to forgive him, or so the film tells us through the character of Saïd. It seems that we're off to a conventional ending. Bad character is "educated" and is a better person at the end of the story through the magic of empathy and shared lived experience.
Meantime, the people at the party in castle in the middle of the desert hardly take note of Henninger's absence and occupy themselves with competitively witty banter, endless meals, lines of cocaine, music, and sex. They debate geopolitics, with the Americans arguing that Muslims don't burn cities in America like they do France and the Europeans retorting that Americans always think it is all about them--all while Muslin servants quietly stand in the corners of the room like statues, waiting to fill an empty glass. Henninger's wife bangs a guy at the party for the heck of it, but by the end of the party there is a sense of mutual dislike of party goes which is driven by their own self-loathing.
During the party, however, we learn a few backstory details about David Henninger in his school days. It turns out that he was an "anti-fascist" and "a lib" and sensitive to the underclass problems before he turned so wicked. And before Henninger leaves the party he hints at his buried sensitivity in correcting his wife that the people serving them at the party are not "staff" as she calls them, but "servants." Henninger is not all bad after all. There is something here to redeem. The film assures that this is so as Saïd and Hamid tell him directly at the end of the film that he is "honorable."
But there is still a price to be paid and David cannot simply be forgiven. He confesses to Saïd that the incident is entirely his fault and that it was no innocent accidents. And so David Henninger is shot in killed in the last scene of the film. Hey, spoilers I guess, right? He is killed in the same spot where he ran over the boy (His name is Driss! - or was it Robert Paulson?). A boy steps into the road with an old Colt revolver and Henninger steps out of the car and slowly walks toward his assassin, accepting his fate. His wife pleas for him to get back into the car and that he doesn't have to do this. Henninger, however, commands the boy several times to "do it," and the boy finally obliges him. End scene. End film. Roll credits.
What is troubling about films like this is that they show how deep animosity runs, how polarized we are. Our empathy only stretches so far today as to imagine that maybe "the other" might just barely recognize their sins before drowning in them. That's about as far as the rainbow of a redemption arc goes now. There's no pot of gold at the end of it, but a grave. The shelf is bare. In cultural terms, were on Pawn Stars, and we're learning that the best we can do for empathy, forgiveness, and redemption is fifty bucks and a quick death. This is the mirror film is holding up to our world. And it offers troubling look into our psychology.
In terms of literary form, this is not an unfamiliar pattern. We have face-turns and heel-turns, but if a heel was a real piece of work before the face-turn, he must die in payment for his sins. Darth Vader, for example, had to die at the end of Return of the Jedi. Just imagine an alternate cut where Luke gets Vader out of the Death Star relatively unscathed and parties with the Ewoks on the moon of Endor. Just imagine Vader talking to Han next to a victory fire, "Hey man, sorry about the torture and freezing you in carbonite, I was in kind of a phase" and then knocking back a sip of Budweiser. Or imagine him talking to Leia, "Sweetie, I am so sorry about Alderaan and the mind probe with the four inch needle. I had no idea you were my daughter. You look sooo much like your mom. Come here and give daddy a hug." And how many times did Loki have to die to expiate his sins? Familiar turf.
And so we come to 2021's Forgiven. Ralph Fiennes stars as his least likeable character since Schindler's List. His character, David Henninger, is a misanthropic, alcoholic, crass, cruel, and inconsiderate man who travels with his wife through the desert in North Africa to attend an elite party attended by a more unlikable characters. Also, he is rich, white, and male, so he's basically a demon. I'm not exaggerating. A character in the film flat out tells him that he is one in comparing menacing looking tribolite fossils (see below) to Westerners of his ilk.
The film splits its characters along lines of class and region. You have native Moroccan Muslims who are hopelessly impoverished, literally trying to scrape a living out the the dirt selling fossils or working as servants. And then you have super-rich white Westerners who embody the ugly American trope cranked to 11. They speak about "Arabs" while their Muslim servants are in the room. They act as if they were not there, flaunting drug use, infidelity, and consumption loads of food, most of which has to be thrown away. Rich Westerners are bad, mmmmmkay?
The central knot of the story is that David Henninger drives drunk to the party and runs over a boy trying to sell a fossil. The couple is more concerned with the inconvenience, possible police trouble, and spoiling the party than with the fact that they killed someone. Our characters have to be reminded, several times, that the boy was a person and that his name was "Driss." The father of Driss shows up to the party to claim the body of his son and insists that the man who killed his son come with him to bury him. Seemingly inexplicably, Henninger goes off alone with Abdellah to bury the boy.
Predictably, Henninger connects with the plight of the poor downtrodden Moroccans and finally comes to express genuine guilt and regret over the accident. Henninger and Abdellah come to a bit of an understanding and it seems that. The father comes to forgive him, or so the film tells us through the character of Saïd. It seems that we're off to a conventional ending. Bad character is "educated" and is a better person at the end of the story through the magic of empathy and shared lived experience.
Meantime, the people at the party in castle in the middle of the desert hardly take note of Henninger's absence and occupy themselves with competitively witty banter, endless meals, lines of cocaine, music, and sex. They debate geopolitics, with the Americans arguing that Muslims don't burn cities in America like they do France and the Europeans retorting that Americans always think it is all about them--all while Muslin servants quietly stand in the corners of the room like statues, waiting to fill an empty glass. Henninger's wife bangs a guy at the party for the heck of it, but by the end of the party there is a sense of mutual dislike of party goes which is driven by their own self-loathing.
During the party, however, we learn a few backstory details about David Henninger in his school days. It turns out that he was an "anti-fascist" and "a lib" and sensitive to the underclass problems before he turned so wicked. And before Henninger leaves the party he hints at his buried sensitivity in correcting his wife that the people serving them at the party are not "staff" as she calls them, but "servants." Henninger is not all bad after all. There is something here to redeem. The film assures that this is so as Saïd and Hamid tell him directly at the end of the film that he is "honorable."
But there is still a price to be paid and David cannot simply be forgiven. He confesses to Saïd that the incident is entirely his fault and that it was no innocent accidents. And so David Henninger is shot in killed in the last scene of the film. Hey, spoilers I guess, right? He is killed in the same spot where he ran over the boy (His name is Driss! - or was it Robert Paulson?). A boy steps into the road with an old Colt revolver and Henninger steps out of the car and slowly walks toward his assassin, accepting his fate. His wife pleas for him to get back into the car and that he doesn't have to do this. Henninger, however, commands the boy several times to "do it," and the boy finally obliges him. End scene. End film. Roll credits.
What is troubling about films like this is that they show how deep animosity runs, how polarized we are. Our empathy only stretches so far today as to imagine that maybe "the other" might just barely recognize their sins before drowning in them. That's about as far as the rainbow of a redemption arc goes now. There's no pot of gold at the end of it, but a grave. The shelf is bare. In cultural terms, were on Pawn Stars, and we're learning that the best we can do for empathy, forgiveness, and redemption is fifty bucks and a quick death. This is the mirror film is holding up to our world. And it offers troubling look into our psychology.
