'The Third Man' is one of my all-time favorite movies. It was made in 1949, 6 years before I was born. It was written by Graham Greene, British author of novels and travelogue, short stories and essays that comprise a literary landscape well worth exploring. He was a movie buff too. Directed by Carol Reed, the film starred Orson Welles, Joe Cotten, Alida Valli and Trevor Howard. The film is placed in post-WWII Vienna and is about the military police trying to stamp out the black market for penicillin. The mood of the city is palpable in the wet cobblestones of its streets and alleys. There are some gorgeous shots of Miss Valli's face with traces of tears on her cheeks that would make any actress wish they were her. The beauty of love lost to death she expresses, its wistfulness, is magic.
The movie conveys existential truth. I'm especially thinking of the deep truth of the classcial Greek myth of Sisyphus, so eloquently essayed by Albert Camus. Over and over again, Sisyphus must roll a boulder up a hill. He can never get it quite to the top, he can never rest. This was punishment for hubris, deserved.
'The Third Man,' near its denouement, as the police are staked out to trap Harry Lime (Orson Welles), leader of the black market for penicillin, has a scene with a drunken old man selling balloons, trying to sell them to the police, begging. Trevor Howard finally gives in and buys one and the the old man is happy for a second, but then his facial expression changes to one of angst. He realizes, I think, that he still has many more to sell. This is the human condition, to which all are fated. We never make it quite to the top; never can rest. Why doesn't happiness last?
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
'Sick of Being Sick'
My cousin Cindy posted on Facebook that she was "sick of being sick" and wanted to get better so she could accomplish some things. Her phrase struck a chord with me and put me in mind of the human condition, generally, according to Biblical teaching and thinkers, theist and atheist, who build on that foundation. Every schoolboy knows that Adam and Eve sinned, disobeyed God, in the garden of Eden, and were exiled from paradise; and so all humanity is living in exile. All of us are infected with original sin, a spiritual disease that requires divine intervention and remediation. Whether or not one accepts the Genesis version of human alienation, the Marxian, Freud's cultural psychoanalysis of the human malaise, Hindu, Buddhist or Islamic paths to salvation, the point here is that many, many wise people agree that something is fundamentally wrong within the human way of being. Many do not realize they're spiritually sick. The first principle of Buddhism is to become Buddha, that is, wake up. This was also the zeitgeist of the 1960s in western nations (raising consciousness, implying the human mind is not sufficiently aware), an era I passed through to today, 2010. What's the answer? Where is the solution, the cure? Here's the hypothesis: become sick of being sick, investigate self-loathing, self-disgust, examine yourself. Are you morally or spiritually sick?
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Time Travel
Time travel is a leitmotif of science fiction; it's an imaginary wonder to go back in time to witness some important event or to go forward to witness what the unknown future has in store. In reality, we all travel through time (and space), but at the speed of 'life,' the speed of earthly existence involving seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years. What I am today is not quite the same as yesterday. What I'll be tomorrow I can guess, but only God knows. God knows past, present and future!
Think about travelling through eternity, living in a place where time is not. First of all, to live in eternity is to live outside of the present universe. What's it like outside the universe? No time. No aging. No development. No, wait, that's wrong, there is development. There are things happening in eternity. The great One lives in eternity. The Almighty speaks. Angels exist. What do they do? They serve God. Some angels rebelled against God, the Bible says. So there is independence and freedom, even in eternity, in God's presence. There is what we call 'evil' outside the cosmos, but it has escaped into our world. So there are pathways between heaven and earth, so to speak.
Living in eternity means living with God, but with the imaginary possibility of living without God. Living in time means living without God, but with the possibility of going to Him. In eternity there is no death, beings there live forever. This world was created to bring death or cessation to reality. This world is the garbage dump of heaven.
[Naturally, we want to escape this world. We want to enter eternity. The Devil is not allowed back into heaven. We were made to draw the evil one out of heaven, to expose him, so to speak. Travelling through eternity is ourselves, perfected, with wings, awestruck at the creations of God.]
Think about travelling through eternity, living in a place where time is not. First of all, to live in eternity is to live outside of the present universe. What's it like outside the universe? No time. No aging. No development. No, wait, that's wrong, there is development. There are things happening in eternity. The great One lives in eternity. The Almighty speaks. Angels exist. What do they do? They serve God. Some angels rebelled against God, the Bible says. So there is independence and freedom, even in eternity, in God's presence. There is what we call 'evil' outside the cosmos, but it has escaped into our world. So there are pathways between heaven and earth, so to speak.
Living in eternity means living with God, but with the imaginary possibility of living without God. Living in time means living without God, but with the possibility of going to Him. In eternity there is no death, beings there live forever. This world was created to bring death or cessation to reality. This world is the garbage dump of heaven.
[Naturally, we want to escape this world. We want to enter eternity. The Devil is not allowed back into heaven. We were made to draw the evil one out of heaven, to expose him, so to speak. Travelling through eternity is ourselves, perfected, with wings, awestruck at the creations of God.]
Saturday, September 25, 2010
The Purpose of Art and the Purpose of Creation
I recently gained a small insight into the nature of reality. This revelation came from pondering some new artwork I became aware of on the Web ( see http://www.christinesoccio.com/) and online conversation w/the artist. It comes under the heading, 'things are not what they seem.'
The artwork impressed me with a sense of beauty and mystery and goodness and consisted of landscape painting in an impressionistic style, panoramic scenes of ocean, lake, desert, sky and also still-life subjects and other subjects. The artist told me she tries "to keep the wonder and awe about our existence and all that God has created in my heart as much as I can." Fine. "Wonder and awe." Note that wonder and awe are temporary feelings, they fade and go away. The artist likes these feelings, but it's a struggle, not easy to retain them. The human 'heart' is the center of individual existence. It is an open space inside us for the storing of what is most important to a person. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matt. 6.21). The artist, like most of us, puts high value on wonder and awe, but these emotions don't stay in our hearts. A child experiences wonder on seeing and touching a flower garden, but later, older, walks by, day after day, without a thought or little thought for the flowers. This tells me that something is wrong w/the human heart. It can't keep safe these highly valued emotions. I would guess that people do drugs to try to rekindle these emotions. Also, think ye not that art, whether literary or pictorial, attempts to rekindle these emotions in us?
What if Adam & Eve felt wonder and awe every instant of their lives in Paradise? This, maybe, was their, and hence our, natural emotional state. The serpent lured them away from well-being to knowledge of evil. Deprivation is evil. Being without wonder and awe is evil. The Garden of Eden is far from modern man.
The artwork impressed me with a sense of beauty and mystery and goodness and consisted of landscape painting in an impressionistic style, panoramic scenes of ocean, lake, desert, sky and also still-life subjects and other subjects. The artist told me she tries "to keep the wonder and awe about our existence and all that God has created in my heart as much as I can." Fine. "Wonder and awe." Note that wonder and awe are temporary feelings, they fade and go away. The artist likes these feelings, but it's a struggle, not easy to retain them. The human 'heart' is the center of individual existence. It is an open space inside us for the storing of what is most important to a person. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matt. 6.21). The artist, like most of us, puts high value on wonder and awe, but these emotions don't stay in our hearts. A child experiences wonder on seeing and touching a flower garden, but later, older, walks by, day after day, without a thought or little thought for the flowers. This tells me that something is wrong w/the human heart. It can't keep safe these highly valued emotions. I would guess that people do drugs to try to rekindle these emotions. Also, think ye not that art, whether literary or pictorial, attempts to rekindle these emotions in us?
What if Adam & Eve felt wonder and awe every instant of their lives in Paradise? This, maybe, was their, and hence our, natural emotional state. The serpent lured them away from well-being to knowledge of evil. Deprivation is evil. Being without wonder and awe is evil. The Garden of Eden is far from modern man.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
'2001: A Space Odyssey,' a Film that Explores the Darkness
Stanley Kubrick's landmark sci-fi film, '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968) is a movie that explores the philosophical darkness that surrounds humankind. This is the very same darkness referenced in the first chapter of Genesis and the first chapter of John's Gospel, a darkness so deep, so extensive, that the universe can't contain it. One may properly term this darkness, metaphysical, or, to borrow a phrase from the film itself, "beyond the infinite." Only, "beyond the horizon" (Eugene O'Neill) does the darkness end.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Impressionist Review of Soderbergh's 'Solaris'
Steven Soderbergh wrote and directed the film, Solaris (2002), based on the science-fiction novel of the same name by Polish author Stanislaw Lem, published in 1961. It is fitting to include a review of this film in this blog, 'Mystery of Existence and God,' because it deals with the philosophical issues of the meaning of life and the debate about the existence of God. The movie includes a scene wherein friends sit around a table arguing back and forth the existence of God or a "supreme intelligence." The concept of 'mystery' comes up in that discussion in ways that show 'mystery' to be a fundamental category of rationality that points toward God, though the majority at the table back the atheist viewpoint. The movie is about humans in a space station orbiting a planet, Solaris, attempting to assess its value as a potential source of energy. Strange happenings aboard the station lead to madness and deaths. A psychiatrist named Chris Kelvin is sent to the space station in a last-ditch effort to salvage the mission. The story unfolds from this character's perspective.
I saw Solaris at a movie theater with my nephew, Michael, when it came out and also several times at home on dvd. I like the movie very much and think it brilliant in portraying humans confronted by an alien power, trying to understand that power. In this case, the power emanates from Solaris and involves creating beings that appear to be human, based on Solaris somehow delving into the minds of the inhabitants of the orbiting station while they're sleeping. Thus Kelvin's deceased (by her own hand) wife Rheya is recreated in his cabin at bedside. The planet Solaris seems to be alive and intelligent and capable of creating life-forms.
As Kelvin reminisces and dreams of his life on Earth w/Rheya, we notice that it is continually raining. When we first meet Kelvin, at the film's start, carrying on his psychological practice before he's asked to visit Solaris, rain falling in an urban setting is a big part of the background. The film's opening credit - "Lightstorm Entertainment" - is accompanied by audio of rainfall and the first image of the film is a windowpane w/raindrops falling outside and on the glass. What is the meaning of this preponderance of rain in this film? How do the phenomena of rain, the absence of sun, gray cloudy skies, raincoats, umbrellas, wetness, enveloping Kelvin and Rheya, relate to the science-fiction themes of the movie, Solaris and its mystifying creative power, the terror and puzzlement and madness of the occupants of the space station? This is called an 'impressionist' review of the film because the rain sets the mood of the film for the viewer and mood is impressionistic, something inside an individual caused by something outside, special to him or her, like how stars made van Gogh feel, evident in his painting, 'Starry Night.'
Rain connotes different things for people at different times, of course. For a farmer in a drought, rain is a godsend, saving his crops; but too much rain may cause grapes to rot and the vintner to sigh and maybe shake her fists. Rain in Solaris is like rain in Elmore James' 'The Sky is Crying,' ". . . can't you see the tears roll down the street . . .," something emotional, a feeling sad and wistful. This is the context of Kelvin's past w/Rheya and his present w/the Rheya of Solaris. Rain has large power on planet Earth. Rain and water are necessary for life. How rain became associated with sadness, I'm not sure, but I can remember intoning the words to that child's rhyme, 'rain rain go away, come back another day' numerous times and there is sadness and wishing for sunshine that goes w/the words. I propose an analogy between rain's creative power on Earth and that of Solaris in outer space. We have forgotten the mystery that is contained in the rain (because we think that h2o and meteorology explain it), but the mystery of Solaris points to the Creator. Ask Chris Kelvin.
I saw Solaris at a movie theater with my nephew, Michael, when it came out and also several times at home on dvd. I like the movie very much and think it brilliant in portraying humans confronted by an alien power, trying to understand that power. In this case, the power emanates from Solaris and involves creating beings that appear to be human, based on Solaris somehow delving into the minds of the inhabitants of the orbiting station while they're sleeping. Thus Kelvin's deceased (by her own hand) wife Rheya is recreated in his cabin at bedside. The planet Solaris seems to be alive and intelligent and capable of creating life-forms.
As Kelvin reminisces and dreams of his life on Earth w/Rheya, we notice that it is continually raining. When we first meet Kelvin, at the film's start, carrying on his psychological practice before he's asked to visit Solaris, rain falling in an urban setting is a big part of the background. The film's opening credit - "Lightstorm Entertainment" - is accompanied by audio of rainfall and the first image of the film is a windowpane w/raindrops falling outside and on the glass. What is the meaning of this preponderance of rain in this film? How do the phenomena of rain, the absence of sun, gray cloudy skies, raincoats, umbrellas, wetness, enveloping Kelvin and Rheya, relate to the science-fiction themes of the movie, Solaris and its mystifying creative power, the terror and puzzlement and madness of the occupants of the space station? This is called an 'impressionist' review of the film because the rain sets the mood of the film for the viewer and mood is impressionistic, something inside an individual caused by something outside, special to him or her, like how stars made van Gogh feel, evident in his painting, 'Starry Night.'
Rain connotes different things for people at different times, of course. For a farmer in a drought, rain is a godsend, saving his crops; but too much rain may cause grapes to rot and the vintner to sigh and maybe shake her fists. Rain in Solaris is like rain in Elmore James' 'The Sky is Crying,' ". . . can't you see the tears roll down the street . . .," something emotional, a feeling sad and wistful. This is the context of Kelvin's past w/Rheya and his present w/the Rheya of Solaris. Rain has large power on planet Earth. Rain and water are necessary for life. How rain became associated with sadness, I'm not sure, but I can remember intoning the words to that child's rhyme, 'rain rain go away, come back another day' numerous times and there is sadness and wishing for sunshine that goes w/the words. I propose an analogy between rain's creative power on Earth and that of Solaris in outer space. We have forgotten the mystery that is contained in the rain (because we think that h2o and meteorology explain it), but the mystery of Solaris points to the Creator. Ask Chris Kelvin.
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