One of my favorite living authors takes on the job of adapting one of my favorite dead (in a manner of speaking, see book) authors’ works. N.D. Wilson is set to adapt C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce for the screen. I am, of course, not sure how it might work, and the Narnia movies (especially the atrocious second film) have been a major disappointment. But if N.D. is on the job, I’m much more interested. His outstanding Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirlis reminiscent in may ways of The Great Divorce. I love that book.
This from Variety (which, as you know, I am constantly quoting)…
“Mpower Pictures (“The Stoning of Soraya M.”) and Beloved Pictures are teaming to co-produce C.S. Lewis’ fantasy novel ‘The Great Divorce.’
Veteran producer and Mpower CEO Steve McEveety will lead the production team. Childrens’ book author N.D. Wilson (‘Leepike Ridge,’ ‘100 Cupboards’) is attached to write.”
Note: CSL’s name for his short book came as a reply to William Blake’s poem, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”
Note the Second: If you buy either of these books here I get a pittance. (Click on the cover image.)
Genesis is so foundational to the rest of the Bible and all of human history.
It is also highly poetic, and (needless to say) so full of truth.
Note: When I say “highly poetic” I do not in any way mean that it is not factual in its accounts of events. I believe that it is factual. It’s just very literary as well, and beautiful. That’s what I meant.
This short video has some fascinating insights. And it’s kinda weird.
You may recognize Doane’s name from his film, Collision –which is outstanding.
A couple of interesting quotes on the idea of movies as a modern replacement for/substitute religion. While a fan of movies myself, I think we often will underestimate the power of influence they carry to inform our basic beliefs. They are, among other things, a powerful form of instruction. Even when not overtly teaching, they frequently instruct us on a deep level. As does almost all art. We love and identify with what we continually expose ourselves to. Movies don’t always present a consistent worldview, but there is remarkable continuity on a wide range of basic belief/understanding. I am interested in your thoughts.-sds
“I meet people occasionally who think motion pictures, the product Hollywood makes, is merely entertainment, has nothing to do with education. That’s one of the darndest fool fantasies that is current . . . . Anything that brings you to tears by way of drama does something to the deepest roots of our personality. All movies, good or bad, are educational and Hollywood is the foremost educational institution on earth. What, Hollywood more important Harvard? The answer is not as clean as Harvard, but nevertheless farther reaching.”
Carl Sandburg
I haven’t seen this movie, but you get the idea.
“I believe cinema is now the most powerful secular religion and people gather in cinemas to experience things collectively the way they once did in church. The cinema storytellers have become the new priests. They’re doing a lot of the work of our religious institutions, which have so concretized the metaphors in their stories, taken so much of the poetry, mystery and mysticism out of religious belief, that people look for other places to question their spirituality.”
“…You see this in Christian movies, too. If you look across the bulk of the movies made, they are shallow, filled with superficial “tragedy” that in every case resolves perfectly, helping the protagonist to more exciting faith.
This is why so many believers who are artists choose to do art outside of the community of faith — or on the outskirts of it. You can communicate harder things, deeper things, if you’re not constrained by an industry that doesn’t want depth, preferring an easy sell. So, you get a movie like Primer, made by a Believer, that explores hard questions about man’s nature and does it interestingly (time travel and the relationship dynamic between best friends). This movie would be a hard sale into the Christian art buying community (Christian bookstores, web stores, etc). But, ironically, it found an audience with thinking people in the general industry. And it was better done than any Christian movie I’ve ever seen.
So, one thing that Christian art must have is depth.”
It will be interesting to see how central the titular poem is to the story. The poem, while admirable in several ways, is pretty fundamentally at odds with a biblical worldview.
But one understands what angle the filmmaker’s are pursuing with it.
Oh you very stupid film. If what you revealed were true, what kind of despair ought to follow? Heaping pails full of baneful woe. And an ugly dog trotting along beside.
Oh mind behind these lies, so far from Eden you can barely reflect a spark’s worth of light. You smother the blazing torch with a titanic effort of suppression. You lay on the trunk of love to be sure nothing beautiful escapes. You are an ungrateful son, a pitiless assassin, a plague of misdirection.
The True story is so comprehensive, a broad and brilliant view. And you have chased the peripheries into a canyon off the map. And all the crafty stories about it were lies. Misled and misleading. “Follow me to freedom,” you say. “Escape from conformity with me.” But you outfit your travelers with complex chains and tell them it is the uniform of self-actualization and they say “More chains please. Damned be our oppressors.”
Folly is your banner. Your suppositions are answerable, your incoherence decipherable as the language of lies.
No.
Autonomy is not ecstasy. Rebellion is not liberty. Order is not enemy. Truth’s not in idolatry. Treason is not fealty.
In other words: I award you zero stars. Two thumbs way down.
“…What a privilege it is to have the trust of your audience. Such is Pixar’s legacy that people who would otherwise turn up their nose at a mere ‘cartoon’ came in droves to fill the house based on the trust of a studio’s name alone. It’s a precious and delicate thing and with each successive film I fear the spell will finally shatter.
But UP isn’t a flop. The integrity of the Pixar name is well intact and may it be so for years to come. There’s nothing I can write here that can say more eloquently what has already been said in theaters across the country. UP’s reviews are written in a communal grammar built of gasps, and happy tears, a language filled with the sighs of the long-lived, the breathless wonder of cynics like me, and best of all the laughter and joyous exclamation not only of children but of those who dare to come and sit in the darkness and hear the storyteller’s whisper and remember how to be child-like once more.”
Right. On.
This was an amazing film. Take your family and go see it. We took our whole family to the movies for the first time (kids aged 6, 3, and 3 months) and it was a wonderful family memory. We’re keeping the stubs.
