Whenever the term religion is mentioned today, a tension can be felt. On the one hand, there is this list of religions which get propogated every time the word is mentioned, e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc. On the other hand, there is this subtle sense that the term and this list are quite distanced from concrete religious practices as they are enacted in particular cultural contexts. What makes religion real? Why does anyone do it?

The Darjeeling Limited is probably one of the best cinema examples of deconstructing religion as of late.  The film follows a trio of brothers played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman on a "spiritual" journey across India. They seek out the Hindu hot spots in an attempt to come to peace, tranquility, and that oh so elusive transcendental state.

Like all Wes Anderson films we are taken into the inner world of their family through carefully written and idiosyncratic dialogue. We begin to feel their utter desperation in the face of their father's death, and lives which have left them numb. The brothers' abnormal quirkiness is accentuated as they literally carry their father's baggage with them around India searching the shallows of their idea of religion - an idea, I would suggest, which is deeply rooted in the dead end consumerism which sees it as what comes next, after, and beyond the "ultra" they were sold five years ago.

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Just saw Spiderman III on DVD. Took a while as I wasn't going to risk the theatre's for this one. Too many bad reviews kept me away for some reason. In some ways I'm sorry I waited. Although the film went a bit overboard on the cheese at times, I found it quite interesting. The main point of intrigue for me was the overtly Christian mythology which undergirded this film's portrayal of evil. 

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After Into Great Silence, Philip Gröning must surely be added to the list of post-Hollywood directors who have mastered the art of what can probably best be described as transcendental cinema.  There have been attempts at films with minimal dialogue in the past.  This may be a style perfected in Germany where films like Sugar Orange (Andreas Struck) follow in the footsteps of Tom Tykwer's The Princess and the Warrior.  What Struck and Tykwer do in part however, Gröning does in full.  Into Great Silence, or die Grosse Stille, is as true to its title as it is possible to be.  With the exceptions of one excursion into a conversation between the monks, and a penetrating engagement with suffering by a monk who had lost his sight, the film is just over two and a half hours of silence - no soundtrack, no voice overs.  We are therefore taken into what is by film making standards a great silence, and the attribution of that adjective can be understood both in terms of the length of silence as well as the magnificence in which that time in silence was spent.  This film is a meditation, and it is into that meditation that I would like to go for a moment.

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Stranger than Fiction is a film about a man who hears a voice narrating his life. He wonders if he’s crazy, but supposing he’s not begins to investigate who might be the author.

On the one hand we all can identify with the voice hearing protagonist, Harold (Will Farrell). We want to believe our lives mean something. We need to believe that our lives fit together in a cohesive narrative. We all will die, but wouldn’t it be nice if our story would continue to be told after we're gone?

What if your life really was a great story? Would it be a tragedy? A comedy? Would it be filled with dramatic moments? Would your story live on even after you die? These questions are as real for us today as they ever were. None of us escape the mundanity of daily life. Raising children means wiping bottoms and runny noses. We all wash the dishes and laundry, and we all put our pants on one leg at a time. I would suggest however, that these things in and of themselves are merely potential props for the real drama.

What do we mean when we say, "get a life" or "I don't have a life."  If we all eat, breath and sleep we all are living right?  But somehow we don't consider it "real life" unless we're really trying to get all we can out of it.  Stranger than Fiction juxtaposes a depiction of a man full of hopeful relationships and lived dreams against the loneliness of a man caught in the daily grind who schedules everything into a joyless humdrum. It seems that a "life" is time spent that somehow becomes timeless and is recounted in a great story. 

Harold's life takes on the quality of a real life when the humdrum is transformed into the drama of a romantic tragedy.  Watching this film can't help but make you wonder what kind of narrative our lives are shaping up to be? 

I'm not sure of all that goes into medical training these days, but if I had one suggestion it'd be to add The Death of Mr. Lazarescu to the curriculum. You can see a trailer and some clips from the film by clicking here.  Really though, anyone who works in some form of bureaucracy ought to see this film.  It's as relevant to academic institutions as it is medical ones. 

This film captures the heart of compassionless administrative heavy institutions in all their petty glory.  It's a based on reality fictional documentary style chronicle of the journey of the ailing and elderly Mr. Lazarescu through the often compassionless Buquarest emergency health care system. 

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This blog post has been picked up by a film review website called metaphilm.com. It can now be found at: http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=493_0_2_0

Here's the trailer:

Just saw Casino Royale. The main focus here will be how it is that Bond has been re-gendered for today's gender politics. Overall I thought it was well done. It was long enough to ensure you felt you'd got your money's worth, but the plot didn't drag too often. The opening, however, I will say was a bit over the top. The cinematography was typical hollywood flash throughout, and did well to cinematically balance realism with flashy shock and awe. Of course they could not resist the body shots of both the new Bond as well as his female compatriots, but here in lies the difference.

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