Until five year ago I experienced films emotionally, and sometimes the impact lasted for longer than the next thing that engaged my attention, and sometimes I continued to think about aspects of the film for days. I rarely considered how the film was made, or systematically reviewed the acting performances, or would be able to recount all the relevant details of the story. My only preparation was to read about the current films being shown in theatre or the briefest note on what it is about which can be found though the Sky information button or the brief one line description in a newspaper listings. I liked the weekly film programme on BBC1 which is the only programme of its type aimed at intelligent adults, especially the eras of Michael Parkinson and Barry Norman. I cannot stand the conceited approach of the ubiquitous Jonathan Ross but if I remember and am in a position to do so, I listen to Dr Mark Kermode on Five Live because I rarely disagree with his assessments, and more recently if I miss the programme I listen to an on line recording
For about ten years I have followed up my visits to the cinema or watching a film on television by downloading a film review from the On Line Film Critics Society to which I attached the retained portion of the ticket, or a note of when and where the film was viewed, and then periodically I would add the information to an alphabetical list on the computer. There were and remain two reviewers that I read first, if available. I rarely disagree with the descriptions and assessments of James Berardinelli and I also usually like the slant of Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat who write from the perspective of Spirituality and Practice.
About three years ago I recommenced visits to live theatre after a break of several years and started to write up the experience and this was extended to the films of Ingmar Bergman, Almodovar, Fellini which I was watching on DVD, and this in turn led to the practice of making a note on every film viewed, sometimes more when writing my pieces for MySpace which commenced in February 2007. I no longer created the master list, something which I regret, although the reading of some reviews afterwards has continued, using Channel Four for British Films not covered by the OFCS and more recently Wikipedia.
Throughout all the recent decades of film experience I can become so fully engaged with a film that it is only afterwards that I relate chords from my own experience, or begin to examine the work more critically. Sometimes as the full credits role or the full credits are included on the www.Imbd.com index, where most films ever made have been included, I debate the justification for the involvement of so many and the overall production costs and one such instance is that of the film The Dangerous Life of Altar Boys which I watched yesterday on DVD where the eighteen listed actors are supported by a direction, writing and production team of 150 and where three production companies, 12 distributors and four other companies providing special effects and others are listed. One had one asks how can all this effort, involvement and expense be justified to create a work which most people will experience for only two hours of their lives and then forget? One recent film cost $2 million and grossed at the box office over $25 million, another cost $80 million and lost over $10 million at the box office. Film making is therefore a creative, sometimes artistic, industry on whom tens of thousands of individuals and their families depend and is an important part of the economy of nations especially those where heavy industry and the manufacturing of material goods is increasingly passing on to new developing economies where the energy, the raw materials and the labour is significant less expensive and in plentiful supply.
Occasionally (because of the careful selection of films that I see) I question the value of the enterprise, and consider that a proportion of the output, primarily intended for the weekend entertainment of young people is harmful to them individually and society in general. Sometimes a film goes to the heart of my own experience that everything else planned for that day, days and weeks changes. The Dangerous Life of Altar Boys is film which I consider to be harmful and which also touched many aspects of my past life and I am still digesting and considering what to say some twenty four hours later.
When the DVD arrived I had no memory why it had been added to the list other that from its title or that Jodie Foster was playing the part of a nun who is satirised in an obscene and profane way by one of her adolescent pupils in a created underground Comic book fashion, as Nunzilla. Because of my reaction to the film I read as many reviews I could find printing out those from Berardinelli, the Brussats and Dennis Schwartz to remind of specific points I knew wanted to mention. It is Schwartz who makes the point that although the film was released in 2002 when public interest and concern was at its height in relation to sexual activity involving priests and nuns with under age young people and children the film is more about a coming into adulthood of young people brought up in a catholic education and church environment and although some critics describe the approach of the nun headmistress as strict and rigid there is no suggestion of physical violence and all she does when the behaviour gets totally out of hand and acceptability is advise that she proposes to contact the parents and announce their expulsion from the school. I would also have expelled them and called in the police.
The two main adolescents, plus two others, like to see themselves as hard done by victims and film sets the tone when the main two use geometry o work out the direction and position where a telephone pole will fall after hey cut it down with a chain saw. By coincidence I was listening later to a radio programme about woodland management where before the process of any tree felling is completed the site is inspected by a safety officer to ensure that because of the age of the tree, the nature of the wood and its location there is no risk to those doing the felling or standing by. The film treats the action of the boys as an escapade that all boys growing up will do.
They then steal a large statue from the church where they are altar boys and where the priest also coaches the boys in a team game. The statue is removed from a tower and again because of their calculations it falls within inches of smashing on the ground because of the selected length of a rope. They refuse questioning by the nun and a plea by the priest for its return before calling in the police, and they respond to this by send in part of a hand which has broken off when the statute is being hidden away.
One of the boys takes up with a young girl who shows an interest in him, and during a sequence when he visits her home when her mother is away, and although it is sensitively and not graphically portrayed the viewer is left with the idea that they have had full sexual intercourse, and we learn that the girl has previously tried to commit suicide, believes she is seeing a ghost and that she has been having ongoing sexual relations with her brother. When the boy tries to raise these issues (it can be assumed) with the parish priest the benevolent advice is to follow the teaching of the Church but also to listen to the nature of body (my interpretation of words in the film not noted down at the time)
However it is their final action which amazingly some reviewers call a teenage prank which I found the most reprehensible. In retaliation to being told they are to be expelled three of the boys decide to carry out something which has been considered beforehand. This is to sedate a Cougar by breaking into its secured location and transport to the home of the Nun headmistress to give her a fright, putting on the least of the potentially criminal outcome. The plan looks as if it will succeed until one of them is killed when the mate or companion of the animal comes from nowhere in the darkness. In real life the other two boys involved will be charged with the manslaughter of their friend and attempted murder of the nun. But in the film one boy is given the task of a reading at the packed church funeral attended by the parents of the boys and the girl, an who I would have at least investigated for parental negligence. This is the context in which some reviewers appear to condone the boys behaviour because of the stance of Jodie Foster as the Nun Headmistress when she expels the two boys for producing their own underground adult comic book, one as graphic artist and the other as its listed editor.
The overwhelming majority of those who have seen the film will have accepted the presentation that this is normal growing up behaviour of young people brought up by parents who exercise little or not control, by a too rigid and doctrinal religion, and over influenced by underground Comic books. To say underground is misleading in this context because film shows them reading the comics obtained from an open public selling stall and where one of them is handed a selected edition to read by its owner.
An aspect of this film is bringing to life some of the comic characters into a mini story interwoven with the rest of the film to make the point how a combination of a fertile imagination and a drawing ability can take over the minds of young lives and lead them to act out fantasy in reality with disastrous and in this instance fatal consequences reminding of all those young people who now play with real guns and live ammunition.
Some reviewers suggest that this is all superficial, and misunderstands what the film is really about . Schwartz points out that film draws on the work of William Blake which the headmistress forbids him to read, but where the priest allows him to read The Tyger from the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The central idea being that in the world there is lamb innocence and the Tyre experience and I am told that the poem asks the question of how a God which made the lamb could also made the Tyger? A question asked of every parent who has to bear the illness, disabling accident and death of a child, those raped, slaughtered in war or through starvation, or imprisoned after false accusation, manufactured evidence and an inadequate judicial system.
A different approach is taken by the Brussats who in their usual eloquent way explain that Christianity "is a religion which makes enormous demands on the human capacity for faith in the unseen and the non rational. It asks believers to acknowledge their limitations in the face of the unknown and to surrender to the ministrations of a loving God. To adhere to this world view is to sail on a sea of mystery and to cherish imagination as a divinely instituted faculty." It is my understanding that the writers then argue that is the way religions, and in particular Christianity become fixed and rigid faced with the changing knowledge of the universe and our understanding of human behaviour has led to the predicament of youngsters such as those in this film which leads to the sins and to the crimes. However although much of Christianity is still left within me I cannot share their belief that the main character in trying to come to terms with "eros, rebellion, anger, pride and creativity," that he consequently can be shown as someone who when tested is able to deal with the situation in a constructive manner and continue onto a Christian based loving and constructive life. There are too many gaps in our knowledge of the young man, especially his parental upbringing and genecology to be confident of this, and from his behaviour in the film I would suggest a future life in which he will find it difficult to strike a balance between his imagination, his creativity and conventions and rules of society and similarly in his personal relationships he will find it difficult to impossible to maintain any relationship which does not attain the levels of those of his creations and the fantasies of others.
For about ten years I have followed up my visits to the cinema or watching a film on television by downloading a film review from the On Line Film Critics Society to which I attached the retained portion of the ticket, or a note of when and where the film was viewed, and then periodically I would add the information to an alphabetical list on the computer. There were and remain two reviewers that I read first, if available. I rarely disagree with the descriptions and assessments of James Berardinelli and I also usually like the slant of Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat who write from the perspective of Spirituality and Practice.
About three years ago I recommenced visits to live theatre after a break of several years and started to write up the experience and this was extended to the films of Ingmar Bergman, Almodovar, Fellini which I was watching on DVD, and this in turn led to the practice of making a note on every film viewed, sometimes more when writing my pieces for MySpace which commenced in February 2007. I no longer created the master list, something which I regret, although the reading of some reviews afterwards has continued, using Channel Four for British Films not covered by the OFCS and more recently Wikipedia.
Throughout all the recent decades of film experience I can become so fully engaged with a film that it is only afterwards that I relate chords from my own experience, or begin to examine the work more critically. Sometimes as the full credits role or the full credits are included on the www.Imbd.com index, where most films ever made have been included, I debate the justification for the involvement of so many and the overall production costs and one such instance is that of the film The Dangerous Life of Altar Boys which I watched yesterday on DVD where the eighteen listed actors are supported by a direction, writing and production team of 150 and where three production companies, 12 distributors and four other companies providing special effects and others are listed. One had one asks how can all this effort, involvement and expense be justified to create a work which most people will experience for only two hours of their lives and then forget? One recent film cost $2 million and grossed at the box office over $25 million, another cost $80 million and lost over $10 million at the box office. Film making is therefore a creative, sometimes artistic, industry on whom tens of thousands of individuals and their families depend and is an important part of the economy of nations especially those where heavy industry and the manufacturing of material goods is increasingly passing on to new developing economies where the energy, the raw materials and the labour is significant less expensive and in plentiful supply.
Occasionally (because of the careful selection of films that I see) I question the value of the enterprise, and consider that a proportion of the output, primarily intended for the weekend entertainment of young people is harmful to them individually and society in general. Sometimes a film goes to the heart of my own experience that everything else planned for that day, days and weeks changes. The Dangerous Life of Altar Boys is film which I consider to be harmful and which also touched many aspects of my past life and I am still digesting and considering what to say some twenty four hours later.
When the DVD arrived I had no memory why it had been added to the list other that from its title or that Jodie Foster was playing the part of a nun who is satirised in an obscene and profane way by one of her adolescent pupils in a created underground Comic book fashion, as Nunzilla. Because of my reaction to the film I read as many reviews I could find printing out those from Berardinelli, the Brussats and Dennis Schwartz to remind of specific points I knew wanted to mention. It is Schwartz who makes the point that although the film was released in 2002 when public interest and concern was at its height in relation to sexual activity involving priests and nuns with under age young people and children the film is more about a coming into adulthood of young people brought up in a catholic education and church environment and although some critics describe the approach of the nun headmistress as strict and rigid there is no suggestion of physical violence and all she does when the behaviour gets totally out of hand and acceptability is advise that she proposes to contact the parents and announce their expulsion from the school. I would also have expelled them and called in the police.
The two main adolescents, plus two others, like to see themselves as hard done by victims and film sets the tone when the main two use geometry o work out the direction and position where a telephone pole will fall after hey cut it down with a chain saw. By coincidence I was listening later to a radio programme about woodland management where before the process of any tree felling is completed the site is inspected by a safety officer to ensure that because of the age of the tree, the nature of the wood and its location there is no risk to those doing the felling or standing by. The film treats the action of the boys as an escapade that all boys growing up will do.
They then steal a large statue from the church where they are altar boys and where the priest also coaches the boys in a team game. The statue is removed from a tower and again because of their calculations it falls within inches of smashing on the ground because of the selected length of a rope. They refuse questioning by the nun and a plea by the priest for its return before calling in the police, and they respond to this by send in part of a hand which has broken off when the statute is being hidden away.
One of the boys takes up with a young girl who shows an interest in him, and during a sequence when he visits her home when her mother is away, and although it is sensitively and not graphically portrayed the viewer is left with the idea that they have had full sexual intercourse, and we learn that the girl has previously tried to commit suicide, believes she is seeing a ghost and that she has been having ongoing sexual relations with her brother. When the boy tries to raise these issues (it can be assumed) with the parish priest the benevolent advice is to follow the teaching of the Church but also to listen to the nature of body (my interpretation of words in the film not noted down at the time)
However it is their final action which amazingly some reviewers call a teenage prank which I found the most reprehensible. In retaliation to being told they are to be expelled three of the boys decide to carry out something which has been considered beforehand. This is to sedate a Cougar by breaking into its secured location and transport to the home of the Nun headmistress to give her a fright, putting on the least of the potentially criminal outcome. The plan looks as if it will succeed until one of them is killed when the mate or companion of the animal comes from nowhere in the darkness. In real life the other two boys involved will be charged with the manslaughter of their friend and attempted murder of the nun. But in the film one boy is given the task of a reading at the packed church funeral attended by the parents of the boys and the girl, an who I would have at least investigated for parental negligence. This is the context in which some reviewers appear to condone the boys behaviour because of the stance of Jodie Foster as the Nun Headmistress when she expels the two boys for producing their own underground adult comic book, one as graphic artist and the other as its listed editor.
The overwhelming majority of those who have seen the film will have accepted the presentation that this is normal growing up behaviour of young people brought up by parents who exercise little or not control, by a too rigid and doctrinal religion, and over influenced by underground Comic books. To say underground is misleading in this context because film shows them reading the comics obtained from an open public selling stall and where one of them is handed a selected edition to read by its owner.
An aspect of this film is bringing to life some of the comic characters into a mini story interwoven with the rest of the film to make the point how a combination of a fertile imagination and a drawing ability can take over the minds of young lives and lead them to act out fantasy in reality with disastrous and in this instance fatal consequences reminding of all those young people who now play with real guns and live ammunition.
Some reviewers suggest that this is all superficial, and misunderstands what the film is really about . Schwartz points out that film draws on the work of William Blake which the headmistress forbids him to read, but where the priest allows him to read The Tyger from the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The central idea being that in the world there is lamb innocence and the Tyre experience and I am told that the poem asks the question of how a God which made the lamb could also made the Tyger? A question asked of every parent who has to bear the illness, disabling accident and death of a child, those raped, slaughtered in war or through starvation, or imprisoned after false accusation, manufactured evidence and an inadequate judicial system.
A different approach is taken by the Brussats who in their usual eloquent way explain that Christianity "is a religion which makes enormous demands on the human capacity for faith in the unseen and the non rational. It asks believers to acknowledge their limitations in the face of the unknown and to surrender to the ministrations of a loving God. To adhere to this world view is to sail on a sea of mystery and to cherish imagination as a divinely instituted faculty." It is my understanding that the writers then argue that is the way religions, and in particular Christianity become fixed and rigid faced with the changing knowledge of the universe and our understanding of human behaviour has led to the predicament of youngsters such as those in this film which leads to the sins and to the crimes. However although much of Christianity is still left within me I cannot share their belief that the main character in trying to come to terms with "eros, rebellion, anger, pride and creativity," that he consequently can be shown as someone who when tested is able to deal with the situation in a constructive manner and continue onto a Christian based loving and constructive life. There are too many gaps in our knowledge of the young man, especially his parental upbringing and genecology to be confident of this, and from his behaviour in the film I would suggest a future life in which he will find it difficult to strike a balance between his imagination, his creativity and conventions and rules of society and similarly in his personal relationships he will find it difficult to impossible to maintain any relationship which does not attain the levels of those of his creations and the fantasies of others.
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