New Christian film: "The Lock In"

First of all, about the concept of "lock in":

A sleepover party, usually held in a public place such as a church or school, in which the participants are not allowed to leave until the next morning.

Indeed, churches (in the US, of course, but I wouldn't be suprised if it happens in  churches of the American/lunatic type  in Sweden too) have lock ins for teenagers. For example, the Springfield Church of Christ is one of them: they lock the kids in for a weekend and, among other things, they

set aside time for small group devotions and bible study, incorporating games such as "find that verse" or other Bible trivia.

And, now, there is a new movie out, "The Lock In", a Christian film, produced by some kind of American Baptist Church, a film that teaches the horror of porn. It teaches that watching porn is a danger to one’s mortal soul. The working premise is that the devil and other demons lurk inside women's genitals.

The film introduces us first to the idea of the church lock in, terrifying in its own right. A group of teens lock themselves in a Baptist church overnight with an old pastor. Fun times ensue. We’re then shown a cast of unlikable Christian teens: Justin, the almost unseen cameraman, filming the lock in because why not? Blake, the rowdy, outrageous ringleader who just wants to have a good time. Nick, the lovelorn lead we’re supposed to relate to. And Jessica, the target of Nick’s insatiable lust. The three boys, thinking it would be hilarious, bring a dirty magazine they found into the church. This lets the Devil in. The Devil then traps the hapless Scooby Gang alone in the church and fucks with their recording capabilities until they go insane. Why? Because porn.

The story here is that the footage was found (and edited) by some church pastors and was so horrifying that they immediately resigned to go sell insurance instead. This horrifying imagery includes a trash can falling over on its own, a shot of a dark hallway suddenly getting kind of yellow, a strange “Braugh!” sound coming from somewhere off-screen (about four times), and the four leads sitting on the floor talking about how they like to look at porn at home. Oh, a random child also appears and makes the same “Braugh!” sound, causing our heroes to run frantically and then spend three minutes recapping what we just saw (they do this a lot).

It goes without saying that the movie, as a movie, is total crap. Everything about it is terrible. I have not seen it, but I read the reviews, here, here, here, and here. Oh yes, and here is a review from the Christian Film Database site (which finds nothing wrong with the film, of course.) Nevertheless,

‘The producers of the film hope that not only will it be entertaining, it will also be used as a tool for conversations about the dangers of pornography and the importance of being aware.’

P.S. If you like Christian films, there seems to be many of them. For instance,  "Harry Potter: A Spirit Conspiracy?" (Harry Potter is a seducing spirit as prophesied of in the Bible),  "The Visitation" (miracles performed by a charismatic guy),  "The Sins of the Fathers" (where one has to decide whether the dreams of a woman are spiritual or not), "The Last Messengers" (disasters happen everywhere, and then Christ appears). In view of all this wealth, "The Lock In" may not be the worst film of all.

"From the soul"

I don't think that the following video needs too much introduction. It's best experienced by devoting 6 minutes in watching it. 

Inception

Last night I made the mistake of going to watch Inception, a new film by Christopher Nolan. The verdict:

Complete, utter trash.

It starts as a boring story. It gets more boring by trying to be complicated, it develops into a boring scenario, when it becomes so boring that you have to walk out.

So I did: After an hour or so, I couldn't take it any more and walked out feeling that I had (i) wasted money, (ii) wasted time, and (iii) become irritated by my stupid choice to go see an idiotic film.

But I should have known better. I should have read the New Yorker's review of the film:

Christopher Nolan, the British-born director of “Memento” and of the two most recent Batman movies, appears to believe that if he can do certain things in cinema—especially very complicated things—then he has to do them. But why? To what end? His new movie, “Inception,” is an astonishment, an engineering feat, and, finally, a folly.

He has spent 10 years contemplating the movie and finally came up with total trash.

He has been contemplating the movie for ten years, and as movie technology changed he must have realized that he could do more and more complex things. He wound up overcooking the idea.

If only I had spent 5 minutes looking at the review I would have realized the unfathomable stupidity of the film whose main idea is that we are watching people dreaming about dreaming:

Nolan gives us dreams within dreams (people dream that they’re dreaming); he also stages action within different levels of dreaming—deep, deeper, and deepest, with matching physical movements played out at each level—all of it cut together with trombone-heavy music by Hans Zimmer, which pounds us into near-deafness, if not quite submission.

I would have known that Nolan makes films at the level of Big Brother, for audiences who love watching films in order to kill 2 hours of their time:

Dreams, of course, are a fertile subject for moviemakers. Buñuel created dream sequences in the teasing masterpieces “Belle de Jour” (1967) and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972), but he was not making a hundred-and-sixty-million-dollar thriller. He hardly needed to bother with car chases and gun battles; he was free to give his work the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams. Buñuel was a surrealist— Nolan is a literal-minded man.

If only I had realized that Nolan was the one who took a wonderful Norwegian film, Insomnia, a 1997 film by Erik Skjoldbjærg, and made it into a Holywood blockbuster in 2002, a very poor immitation of the 1997 original, I would have known that Nolan's films are to be avoided at all costs. But I hadn't relized that Nolan is the same joke of a director who spoiled the Norwegian film.

David Denby, in his review for the New Yorker, concludes thus:

In any case, I would like to plant in Christopher Nolan’s head the thought that he might consider working more simply next time. His way of dodging powerful emotion is beginning to look like a grand-scale version of a puzzle-maker’s obsession with mazes and tropes.

I absolutely agree. However, I'm afraid that as long as there are Big Brother watchers, Nolan's films will keep generating money for him and his sponsors.

The white ribbon: a review

The 150 minutes long black&white film portrays a repressed society in a small German village just before the beginning of WWI. Although there is no central story, the film does not feel as long as it is because it manages to capture the spectators' attention who are seeking to comprehend every little detail in it. Even staring at the closed door, for what seems a long time, listening to childrens' screams, while they are being caned in a ritual punishment ordeal by their father (the priest), is not boring and makes you wonder. A society where almost nobody dares question the status quo be it patriarchical, feudal, religious, or sexual sadistic. Things are they way they are and must remain so, most villagers think. There is no escape from tyranny, work for the Baron is the only option available, and fun is only permitted when the Baron says so. One must feel guilty at all occasions: in school, at home, at work, in the church. Love, if it exists, is only in moderation and must not be seen or acknowledged.

Where are members of such a society led to? No wonder, they become torturers, killers, abusers, repressed individuals. Some of them have no choice because they have never been permitted to show their anger even as little kids. This anger grows and grows and, in the end, we know what happens: The little child will become the Nazi killer later on (no the film does not go there, but it clearly suggests so).

Yes, there are unresolved mysteries in the film, we wonder who did this hideous things, we start suspecting, and, in the end, perhaps we know. But this is not the point of the film. The film is not about trying to find the culprits as it has been suggested in many reviews. This is a secondary point, one that, if you wish, you can see in this way, but you'll be missing the central idea which is a bit more subtle. Or you can ponder on it later...

What I find most interesting in the film is not so much the direct punishment itself, but rather the implicit suppression of all kinds of things, including your thoughts, your opinions, your expressions... You are not allowed to even have a thought that may be different from the one imposed upon you by the feudal or religious establishment. If you do, you better hang yourself. There are, fortunately, survivors of this, and the narrator himself, the teacher of the village, is a rational person, one who will express what he feels and thinks. Fortunately for him, and for everybody else, deus ex machina in the form of WWI comes to provide a kind of cleansing: there is no other way for this society to heal itself other than be destroyed. Thus, the narrator, never has to go through the painful process of exposing his findings. He is saved.

The film is a psychological masterpiece. In it we can see all kinds of human emotions and acts: anger, revenge, love, repression, humiliation, pride, subordination, perversion, faith, exasperation, hope,.... We can take a look at what has happened, time and again, happens and will happen in human societies. And we can learn that, unless we question those out there who tell us how to think, when to laugh or cry, what to believe and how to behave, we will constribute, especially if this happens en masse, to our self-destruction.

The white ribbon (das weiße Band)

I'm looking forward to seeing this new film, by Michael Haneke. In two hours, at the Filmhouse. The film is about "the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature." It's set up in a village in northern Germany in 1914, just before WWI. Strange incidents occur, acts of vandalism and violence, which gradually assume the character of a ritual punishment.

From the Filmhouse description:

The White Ribbon is not about the repercussions of a single buried event, but a continuous diseased process, in which those without power – children and disenfranchised adults – are in a permanent state of futile rebellion against authority, expressed in spiteful acts of anonymous nastiness; these trigger spasms of fear in both the community and their masters, who respond by redoubling their resented discipline. 
The White Ribbon has an absolute confidence and mastery of its own cinematic language, and the performances Haneke elicits from his first-rate cast, particularly the children, are eerily perfect.

The film won the palm d'or award at the May 2009 Cannes film festival. Report on it afterwards. My report on it later.