Two different filmmakers, two different films

I was curious how Gary Ross, director of The Hunger Games, was going to handle such a violent, disturbing book. A book which described, among many other things, a child beating another one to death with a rock, another being tortured by wild animals before mercifully being killed by the protagonist. The director handled the violence inherent to the story in a toned-downed, off-screen way, and removed a lot of the most heartless violence. He actually managed a PG-13 rating. In my view this was the lowest possible rating for any movie in which the theme is children killing children for sport. In short: the director did great, given the violent material he had to work with.

Peter Jackson's handling of The Hobbit, however, was a totally different story. Jackson not only added battles not in the original story, he added especially graphic and disturbing images of violence in those moments, and others, that were completely unnecessary, even to Jackson's remade version. Violent, realistic images in The Hobbit includes: multiple decapitations, chopping off of limbs, multiple mutilations by the sword, a stomach sliced open, someone's brain being repeatedly bashed in until he dies (the victim fights back at first then slowly and very clearly dies).

Gary Ross definitely didn't turn Hunger Games into Pollyanna but he lessened the violence. Peter Jackson definitely stepped it up a notch. The result is that Jackson made a film too slow for many adults new to the story and too violent for most children. The fact that this movie doesn't have an R rating is curious to me. The only excuse I can think of is that every gruesome victim is a computer-generating character, not a human. The "evil" creatures are portrayed as ugly, less-than human, hardly worth caring about as they are being mutilated on-screen. Still, in such a realistic portrayal I don't see that as much of an excuse.

Take my advice: Read The Hobbit to your kids, hold off on letting them see the film, and hope Jackson chills the extreme violent images in his next film so you can take them to see it.

A New Fundamentalism

This is a polemic to reactions like these regarding Tennessee's new legislation protecting teachers who allow discussions about the merits for and against evolution.

As one secularist defined "science" in a post today:

The systematic study of the nature and behavior of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts in general terms.

This definition brought up a good point. It's a decent understanding of what science is but since science itself is just a particular philosophy for describing the world, shouldn't the philosophy of science be up for an intelligent, philosophical debate? And if ever there should be a safe place for those starting out down the wonderful road of science to discuss just what science is in the first place, shouldn't it be in the classroom?

If there is a super-natural that affects the natural, then wouldn't it stand to reason that we could observe the natural being affected?  Nothing in the secularist's definition above precludes us from observing, experimenting, and measuring natural phenomena and formulating hypothesis that involves a super-natural cause. Only secular dogma would prohibit super-natural hypotheses being used to explain natural phenomena. The secular assertion in itself is not a problem.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion as to the possibility of the existence of the supernatural.

The problem for me starts when they then flatly assert that everyone else, to be taken serious, must hold to the same secular opinion that the super-natural couldn't possibly affect the natural and therefore it's outside the realm of science. Now that's just fundamentalism of another kind I suppose.  It's simply one's personal philosophy that determines whether they believe natural phenomena can potentially have super-natural causes. And if that's the case I think super-natural causes are something worth discussing in a science classroom without getting slammed, legally, for it.  Let the discussion about the philosophy of science take place in a safe science classroom environment without the teacher having to fear that she's establishing a religion and infringing upon someone's civil rights. After all, what is science for if not to challenge our preconceived notions.

Hugo: My favorite movie of 2011 and why

[Warning: if you consider it spoiling a movie to discover the underlying theme of the movie prior to watching it, don't read this post until you've seen Hugo.  The movie revealed its theme to me only in the last few minutes.  I really enjoy that revelatory experience and consider it essential for my movie-going enjoyment.  If you agree with me on that and haven't seen the movie yet, don't read on.  just trust me when I say you won't be disappointed by Hugo.]

"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason."

 An orphan, a has-been, and a cripple. Three broken people who, more than anything else in life, just want to work correctly.  These are the central characters of Hugo, an amazing movie about one's purpose in life and about finding that purpose in the most unlikely places and in the most unlikely ways.  All other characters (and robots), regardless of their screen time, are present merely to bring these 3 central characters into the right place at the right time in order to reveal that through the midst of great human brokenness, everyone was created with a purpose.

Visually I loved the film.  It had a whimsical quality to it that made you understand, before ever experiencing them, that throughout the film you were going to be exposed to some fantastic, imaginative, unrealistic things.  This was not a study in realism and we have visual cues of that from the beginning.  So when fanciful things happen the audience isn't tempted to say, "that could never happen" but rather the fantastic events just naturally flow out of the visual style of the film.  It's all the beauty of Scorsese's Gangs of New York without all the bother of horror and violence you'd expect in a movie about a sociopath.  No sociopaths to be found here, just broken people glumly pursuing what they all believe is their lot in life, with no idea how much joy awaits them by the end of the film.

While the movie was great fun to watch, the more I recall the various themes in Hugo, the more enjoyment I continue to receive from the film after-the-fact. Hugo is a movie about a fixing things.  Things that are broken. The amazing realization we discover along with the whimsical protagonist, Hugo, is that the things that he needed to fix weren't clocks and they weren't even the amazing mechanical robot that was so precious to him. In fact at the end of the film the robot is as valuable as the scrap metal from which is was built.  It's merely an object whose purpose was to fix the lives of broken people.  Ironically Hugo, one of those broken people, thought his purpose was to fix the broken robot.

The things Hugo fixed were the people's lives who he came across. Just as he eventually fixes the station inspector's broken leg brace, he also manages to fix the inspector's broken life as well (or perhaps more appropriately, his broken heart).  Hugo also manages to fix the broken life of the once-was has-been Georges Melies.  Somehow the mysterious robot in an equally mysterious way brings Hugo into Melies' life in order to fix Melies life and in the process, Hugo's life as well.  So how did the robot seem to be in all the right places at the right times?  Serendipity? Contrived movie plot device? Fate?  Providence?  Coincidence?  If you asked Hugo he'd likely respond that the robot was just one part of a big machine that's as big as the entire earth.  And like all good machines ever created, it was just fulfilling the purpose for which it was built.  It created the most unlikely friendship (Hugo and Georges), fixing both of their lives in the process.

At an emotional climax at the end of the film Georges has to remind Hugo that the robot worked perfectly.  I feel the exact same way about the film itself.