Immigration

The following is taken from the text of a Thought for the Day I presented on BBC Radio Ulster this morning.

In a few weeks’ time, I will make a life-changing journey. After 33 years of living in Northern Ireland, I am about to become an immigrant. I’m excited about this move,
not least because I believe that doing something new is one of the best ways to grow as a human being.

But two questions come to mind as I prepare myself for leaving home.

The first is, ‘What it will feel like to be an immigrant?’ Will I be welcomed by the people in my adopted country? Will I stand out? Will I have to sell newspapers at traffic lights or wait tables in restaurants where the indigenous population refuses to work? Will I have slogans painted on the wall of my house telling me to leave? Will I have to rely on churches and charities to defend my human rights? If there is something wrong with my visa, will I be handcuffed and detained indefinitely?

In considering my own imminent immigrant status, I am very aware of how often I have failed to welcome the people who have migrated to Northern Ireland recently. I have not always sought to see the good in the faces of people who have arrived here, often coming from difficult circumstances. I hope people will respond differently to me as I move overseas, and help me find a sense of home when I get there.

The second question is, ‘What I will miss when I leave?’ We have a reputation
for complaining in this society – but I want to remember what it is about being northern Irish that makes us all feel, at times, that this is the greatest place on earth.

Of course I’ll miss my friends and loved ones – and hopefully they’ll miss me too.

I’ll yearn for our sense of humour – especially the ability to laugh at ourselves.

In my mind’s eye, I’ll visualise the natural landscape – from the reward of the view after the walk up the Silent Valley to the way evening light hits the lough shore in Randalstown Forest.

And I will miss the sense of community that is bound together by our local media when they’re at their best.

Finally, of course, there is our extraordinary political experiment – the attempt to resolve a violent conflict without victory or defeat, but through agreeing to disagree, to put the past behind us, and to share power for the sake of all the people.

It’s got its teething problems, of course, but we are also often very hard on our politicians. So I want to end my last Thought for the Day as a Northern Irish resident with the hope that we might, after decades of complicated and painful relationships, be able to commit ourselves to something simple: to decide always, before we start complaining, to first do this: to try to see the good in each other.

Is 'Southland Tales' the new 'All the Pretty Horses'?

I need your help, regarding a matter that may initially seem simple, but on closer reflection may well be the unanswerable question:

Justin Timberlake lip-synching to The Killers

Jon Lovitz as a racist cop

Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star investigative journalist

Dwayne Johnson as a much more famous version of himself

Wallace Shawn and Miranda Richardson together at last

Religious visions of the apocalypse and consumerism will eat itself scenarios

Some of the most striking visual images in US cinema of the past ten years

‘Strange Days’ meets ‘Memento’ meets ‘Blade Runner’ meets ‘Donnie Darko’ meets ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’

I think.

So, to the question: can anyone tell me what the hell ‘Southland Tales’ is about?

It’s well-known (and obvious from watching it) that this movie has been cut to ribbons - which didn’t harm ‘Across the Universe’, a movie that I felt could have lost a couple more scenes and still been breathtaking; on the other hand, I still wait in vain for a director’s cut of Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘All the Pretty Horses’, which I genuinely think could be a masterpiece if the studio hadn’t exercised their prerogative to make great things worse by dividing them in two. ‘Southland’ comes from Richard Kelly, who in ‘Donnie Darko’ proved himself capable of both smart philosophy and cinematic poetry - sort of a Ferris Bueller meets Ingmar Bergman kinda guy; and so I want to believe that his next film is more than the sum of its parts. But watching it last night was … how should I say this? Confusing to the point of monotony? Maybe, but I’m open to a re-viewing with new lenses: and this is what I need you for: Is there any one among you who can tell me what I should do with ‘Southland Tales’?

Some Questions on Sexuality and Theology

I once heard the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams sum up his vision for what religious life could be when he defined Christianity in the following eight words: ‘God’s love in Jesus Christ is never exhausted’. As the Anglican Communion’s Lambeth conference prepares to meet it seems that this is a far cry from the dehumanizing language used recently by figures in church and politics alike, in interventions about theology and sexuality.

I think we’re missing the point. Religious people have developed a reputation for prudery and sexual repression, while the iconic images of sexuality in gossip magazines, television and other media rely far too much on simplistic notions of beauty, and the promotion of hedonism. Simply put, religious people aren’t supposed to be enjoying sex, while everyone else is supposed to be having it all the time.

But I think it goes even deeper than this – lots of people (and I count myself among them) struggle to see life itself as a gift freely given, with endless possibilities. Religion and secular ideology both often seem to trap people in a mindset of feeling unworthy of what some people call God’s love, and what might also be helpfully termed self-acceptance. Yet many of the important figures who shaped religious history seemed better at taking life for what it is than we are today; Martin Luther, who said ‘love God, and sin boldly’; St Augustine who preceded this with the parallel thought ‘love God and do what you want’; earlier still was Jesus, whose promise to his followers that they might have the most abundant life possible finds only a hollow echo in so much of religious life today.

So, where does this leave us? Well, as one Church of England priest said this week, I think that Christianity – my tradition - needs to get over its obsession with respectability. If we want to talk about theology and sexual orientation we should stop defining people exclusively in terms of their sexuality, we should really listen to the stories of people whose lives are the subject of the current theological debates, and we should spend at least as much time actively speaking out against homophobic attacks and replacing homophobic language with words and actions that respect people’s dignity. We need to recognize that the history of religious and political institutions alike includes changing their positions on a range of important issues – from slavery to race to gender. And maybe ultimately we need to take the risk of believing that a faith defined by the notion that God’s love is never exhausted might actually have something new to say to us about human relationships.

hancock - with spoilers, not that it matters

so, here's what might have happened. some time ago, a coupla guys sat down to write the treatment for a new superhero movie. one of them had a pretty decent pedigree, having put together the scripts for about thirty x-files episodes; the other was newer to the task, but had proven his chops in the composition of one of the few jet li movies to manifest a grasp of film grammar - 'fearless' (not the fantastic peter weir-jeff bridges existential work of 1993, which if you haven't seen you should stop reading this and rent straight away). the idea goes something like this: let's do a movie about a superhero that looks a little different from the rest. let's do a movie about a superhero who doesn't know where he came from, or why he's here. let's do a movie about a superhero who wakes up regularly drunk and depressed, and causes mayhem every time he tries to save someone; leaving a trail of metallic wreckage throughout the urban landscape familiar from superbatspiderxmen movies of the past. let's make him unique: an unpopular superhero. let's put him on the receiving end of anger from the public; and in need of some redemption. let's mix things up a bit by making his only friend - in this case a p.r. consultant - married to a beautiful woman who feels a little strange around our protagonist. let's make the revelation at the centre of our story be that this superhero is the most truly tragic superhero in movie history. let's make him a lonely amnesiac who has been suffering a crisis of identity for over eighty years; and let's make the beautiful woman his wife of several thousand years, who, like him, does not age because she cannot. she has left him alone because - in a twist that is potentially up there with 'the usual suspects', 'the crying game' and 'taxi driver' - she is his superhero pair, and they have discovered that even though they love each other, when they are in physical proximity, their powers weaken, and they are vulnerable to attack. let's end the story with both of them nearly dead at the hands of their enemy, and deciding to part in order to save each other. sure, we can start the tale with a little humour, a little amusement, a little dance with the audience; but the point of this story is to pull our hero out of his lackadaisacal jokey reverie. the first half of the movie is 'mystery men' meets 'the long weekend' or 'days of wine and roses', and the second half is the secret love child of 'unbreakable' and the david banner full-of-pathos parts of 'the incredible hulk'. in that regard, it will be a rare thing: a mainstream hollywood movie that manages to be both entertaining and artful, dramatic and intelligent; honest about its own terms.

alas the realisation misses the mark - 'hancock' coulda been a contender, but ... have a listen to the film talk podcast for more on 'hancock' and other movie lore

'The Visitor'

On the film podcast that I co-host with Jett Loe, we haven’t invested a lot of time in the ongoing conversation discussing smaller, independent-style movies; there’s no agenda there - it just happens that way. But we will be talking about 'The Visitor', after I saw it last week. It deserves serious attention.

In keeping with our policy of not discussing the film in advance of the show, I’ll have to keep my deeper opinions to myself for now; but I think I can get away with this: ‘The Visitor’ deserves your time because it is a serious attempt at telling a story about people who feel real, and who encounter real problems and hopes (grief, the possibility of new friendship, the tortuous negotiation of the US immigration system, learning to play the djembe); some people may say that one of the reasons they don't consider contemporary US ‘indie’ drama to be a source of enthusiasm is that these films are rarely told with visual flair, and in that regard, why not just make them into plays or novels? And I think that is often right. But Tom McCarthy, whose previous film is the utterly beguiling ‘The Station Agent’, knows how to frame human beings talking, and while what’s in the physical image is important, I think that a movie that conveys heart but may lack the photographic nuance of Henri Cartier-Bresson (or Henri Alekan, or Vilmos Zsigmond, or Robert Elswit) might still end up being the most engaging film I’ve seen all year.