Tonight I sat down with a few very dedicated friends to watch a movie I have been heavily anticipating for about a week now. Why are these friends "dedicated"? Because what Melissa has said about my movie selection is true; I love sad/twisted movies, and because what Amy Jo has said is also true: my movies are boring. Manderlay was tonight's anticipated movie, and it did not disappoint. Was it sad and boring? Some might say so. But what I love most about these sad, boring movies is that they have depth and that I can usually count on a really good discussion after the movie.
Only a few minutes prior to watching the movie I was talking with a friend about a speaker we had both heard this week. We usually don't see eye to eye and this discussion was no different. My estimation was that the speaker was boring, his, that he was intelligent and "right-on." ("Right-on" are my words not his) As he quickly unpacked theological issues from the speaker's talk, I realized how I was unequipped to judge the speech of its value. So too, is he, my friend, too hasty and perhaps under-equipped to judge filmmakers.
When the chapel speaker gave his speech I did try to listen and learn from a man of far more life experience and wisdom, but words don't capture my attention like images can. If Manderlay were a book and I had read it, it wouldn't have communicated half the message it did through watching it. It should come as no surprise that of the two of us, an artist and a scholar, that I am the one whose homework is paintings, drawings, sketches, animations, and other visual communications, and that his homework is researching and writing papers, one after another (just this week he turned in a 28-page paper!).
In a different conversation this year I was telling a friend how I had such strong passionate thoughts on a number of subjects but don't have the vocabulary to express them in words (thus I believe I am exempted from an traditional Evangelical calling...I couldn't communicate jack-shit). This person cleverly pointed me to the simple possibility that that is why I am an artist. I just hope that I can learn to communicate through my artwork. I had before then only thought of artwork as a pretty past time, something that for a practicalist like myself was a great sore. I still don't know how to communicate what I think, even though a lengthy 2 am post might say otherwise, but I hope I can grow to appreciate how others are communicating while I am still trying to figure my shit out.
List of things addressed, although all not overtly or necessarily in the Directors intention, in Manderlay:
1. Human Nature
2. Racism and Prejudice
3. Freedom, Democracy, Politics
4. Missions
5. well, there are certainly more or else I made the other list items too general...plus it's almost 3am.
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4 comments:
boone, i think that despite what you may think or what you may have been told, at times you can communicate with words better than most people. and i really mean that. this was a very thoughtful post.
on that note - now i feel lame that i didn't stay for the movie, but i was more in the mood for freeks and geeks. guess i'm not as deep:/
Is the director of Manderlay the same guy who did Dogville?
It's not that i don't like the sad/twisted/boring movies as well, i just don't always want to watch them.
And i agree with what you said about how people process/think. I was thinking about this the other day--probably because my housemates or friends look at me strangely because of how i see things sometimes. But, even if our friend had stayed and finished the movie, and if he had found things to think about from it or that he liked about it, he still wouldn't see it in the same way that someone looking at it from a creative point of view would see it. And I think that's okay. Because if everyone liked what we think is "creative" or "artistic" then that would ultimately eliminate actual creativity.
Boone,
You don't know me, and I don't know you, but I found you on Chris Leroux's blogroll, and was interested to learn of a movie called Manderlay. BTW, I'm a JBU alum too, but I don't know if we were there at the same time. I started on '01 and finished in '06. I am interested in Manderlay because it is also the name of the house in Alfred Hitchcock's movie Rebecca, which was based on a book of the same title which I read and loved. Do you know of the film Manderlay has any connection to Rebecca?
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