The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Stars: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage

Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images

This is the first installment in a trilogy, and I imagine that each movie of the series will have its own arc and focus, with a huge over-arching message about self-sacrifice and heroism and such.  But the spiritual message to be found in this first installment is a very, very small one.

Gandalf: Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay...

A brief synopsis:

Gandalf has enlisted Bilbo Baggins, a Halfling, to serve as the thief on an expedition of dwarves (who are bigger than Hobbits, but not by much) as they attempt to reclaim the land and treasure that was stolen from them by Smaug the Dragon.  They don’t quite make it to their destination in this first installment, but they do manage to face a mind-blowing number of obstacles, nonetheless.

Bilbo Baggins is qualified, according to Gandalf, because Gandalf says so.  He has qualities that are unique to Hobbits and that are unique to him. 

“Hobbits are remarkably light on their feet, in fact, they can pass unseen by most if they choose. And while the dragon is accustom to the smell of Dwarf, the scent of a Hobbit is all but unknown to him which gives us a distinct advantage.”

But Bilbo feels, (and most of the dwarves, especially Thorin, agree) that he is hopelessly unfit for these kinds of adventures.

“He's thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since first he stepped out of his door!”

Yet, through the course of many turns of events and acts of desperation and bravery, Bilbo becomes indispensable to the expedition.

              "No, it's fine.  I would have doubted me too."

Spoilers follow

Bilbo is dismissed by Thorin because he is small, weak, untested, and foolish, which, when you reflect on it, doesn’t really make any sense.  Thorin Oakenshield’s name is derived from a pivotal moment in battle when he himself was seriously overmatched and triumphed anyway.

“He stood alone against this terrible foe, his armour rent, wielding nothing but an oaken branch as a shield…”

It takes him some time (and experience) to remember that it is in the small things that great things happen, that hints of the awesome are found in the ordinary.  He does know it.  He betrays that knowledge when he is talking about the ragtag band of dwarves that he has hinged the future of his people on.

            “I would take each and every one of these dwarves over the mightiest army.”

But we, watching the movie, are never allowed to forget it.  From the first moments of the movie, our attention is brought to the pivotal nature of the small and insignificant. 

The Kingdom of the Dwarves rose into greatness and then fell into ruin because of a gem the size of a dwarf’s hand, beautiful and incredibly valuable but, when you come right down to it, a fairly small thing. 

Thorin’s defiance of the Pale Orc during the battle was the small thing that rallied the Dwarf troops for one last mighty push against their enemies.

Then, constantly throughout the movie we are reminded about the small things defeating much greater things.

            Bilbo Baggins: What are you saying? That my sword hasn't seen battle?

            Dwarf: Not sure it is a sword, to be honest. More of a... letter opener.

            Gandalf: These are Gundabad wargs. They will outrun you!

            Radagast: These are Rhosgobel rabbits. I'd like to see them try.

Right at the very end, during the last horrible battle of the orcs, when Gandalf and the dwarves are trapped hopelessly in a falling tree hanging over a cliff, cornered and tormented by orcs and wargs, Gandalf puts his hope and faith for salvation in the communication abilities of a small butterfly.

Eventually, this story is going to come to a confrontation between a monstrous world-dominating power and a tiny, exhausted Hobbit, and the object that will decide the match will be a single, insignificant band of gold.

Why small things?   Why is it so important to place our focus on the seemingly insignificant?  Is it because the storyteller wants us to feel strong, even though we are weak?  I’m not sure what Peter Jackson (or for that matter, Tolkien) had in mind.  But I do know that they are not the first storytellers to feel that this was an important point to make.

"For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20

The stories that captivate us from the Old Testament and the New are the ones where a small act brings about a great change. One mother placing her baby in a basket changes the fortunes of the Hebrew people forever. One man standing against the giant with his slingshot changes the outcome of a hopeless war. One man refusing to pray to anyone but his own God, and believing even in a den of lions that this was the right thing to do, changes the heart of a king.

And of course, there is the biggest story of weakness defeating greatness.

      “…rather, he made himself nothing… he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”  Phil. 2:7-8

It is hard, sometimes, to look at evil’s hold on our world and think that we are capable of ever being true adversaries to evil. What are we? We have scientists pointing out to us that we are so microscopic compared to the rest of the universe that we may as well not exist at all, even while the same scientists are trying to bolster our opinions of ourselves by telling us that we are made out of star cruft. They’re talking about our bodies, of course, which is really irrelevant to our real size.

            “You don’t have a soul. You have a body. You are a soul.”  C.S. Lewis

I believe that we are fascinated by stories like The Hobbit because we know that there is an intrinsic truth. Good does not triumph over evil because good is strong.  Good triumphs over evil because, even with all its frailty, good is ultimately indestructible.  

Whatever plans evil makes, in the imaginary worlds or the real one, evil will lose. Evil has, in fact, already lost.  Because of one man's sentence to die on a cross, evil has utterly, irrevocably, finally lost. 

So when you really think about it, is anything that has aligned itself against evil ever really small?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)                     Logan Lerman and Emma Watson

Rated PG-13 on appeal for mature thematic material, drug and alcohol use, sexual content including references, and a fight - all involving teens.

I did not read this book. I probably will, now that I’ve seen the movie, but I haven’t read it yet.

This was recommended to me by my friends who said “you will recognize the people in this movie. You went to high school with them, too.”  I understand what they meant.  I sat at that table.

There is a lesson that you either learn or that you miss early in high school, and that is that if you have good friends, you don’t need cool friends.  If you have three devoted friends, you don’t need dozens of fair weather friends. And that when you release yourself from the pressure of belonging to any part of the social hierarchy, you drift to your place, and find peace and fun there.

That’s the basic message of this movie. But the spiritual message asks a little bit more of us.

“…do you ever think, that if people knew how crazy you really were that no one would ever talk to you?”

Quick Plot Synopsis

Charlie is a young Freshman who has had some traumatic struggles in his past. We don’t find out what they all are, just that he’s coming out of an incredibly bad year and trying to start over in high school.  He hopes for companionship based on his legendary football-playing brother, and then because of his upper-classmen sister. But there is no help for him there.  He doesn’t find a place to belong until he meets the beautiful but eccentric Sam and her stepbrother Patrick. 

            “Welcome to the island of misfit toys.”

Between this pair, Charlie finds a place to belong, as well as a group of friends who need to be lifted up by him.

            “Thanks for not calling me Nothing, by the way.”

Charlie sees his friends as individually struggling, he sees their pain and their longing and the destructive things they do to themselves.  He observes and he offers help wherever he can, partly to solidify his own position among them, but partly because it’s the only way to stop hurting for them.

            “Teacher: Well, we accept the love we think we deserve.

            Charlie: Can we make them know that they deserve more?

            Teacher: We can try.”

SPOILERS FOLLOW

This movie is not for everyone.  A lot of people I know will watch it and get hung up on the grinding axes.  Some people I know will get distracted by the differences in morality between themselves and the main characters.  So it’s not for everyone.

Charlie and his friends engage in some very risky behavior. They do drugs, they drink, they have destructive relationships, and they all participate in the live Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I just consider to be wildly destructive, although I am told that’s just because I don’t understand how it’s fun. I’m not a prude or anything, I just don’t understand the charm of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  It’s fabulous in its awfulness.  Like a warthog.  Anyway.  Back to the point.

His friends have also suffered, deeply, real damage. The kind of damage that we don’t like to think about. Those of us who were blessed to escape that kind of damage early in life assume that if a person is not curled up in a corner of a padded room rocking themselves and wishing for a sharp object, they must have escaped it, too.  We don’t always realize that the people we know might be putting makeup on some fairly horrific emotional scars. 

We don’t know.  We don’t actually know anything about the beautiful freaks. (Thanks, Nadia). How are we to know?  So… what are we supposed to do with the people that don’t follow the rules, that make choices we don’t understand, that are destructive to themselves even though they can be loving to others? 

We are placed in the path of broken people and given ways to heal them.  We know that God takes care of the broken, that He never stops reaching out in healing, that He gives people what they need in order to keep putting one foot in front of the next, continuing on their paths.

            “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  Psalm 147:3

But how does He do that, exactly?  How does God reach someone like, say, Patrick, who is bullied on a daily basis for his sexual orientation? Or like Sam, who was abused as an 11 year old girl?  How does God reach out to those people if they are not sitting in a church, in a pew, reading His word and listening to His music? How does He let them know that they are a priceless part of His plan and heirs to his kingdom? We are placed in the path of the people that need help and acceptance , and then we are given what we need to bring love into their lives.

            “…you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but

          with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” 

                                            2 Corinthians 3:3

I think that the message of this movie is to think very carefully before you reject a person who is reaching out in friendship simply because you don’t understand them. The group of misfits opens itself up to allow Charlie in, and as a result, each member of the group benefits from Charlie’s compassion and empathy. Sometimes that takes the form of something truly lovely.  For example, there is a moment when Charlie buys gifts for each of his friends that reflect that he has truly been paying attention to them.

            “You see things and you understand.”

There is a moment when Charlie realizes that Sam, who he holds in such enormous esteem, thinks very little of herself.

            “...you're not small...you're beautiful.”

And then there is the moment when Charlie saves Patrick.  Not just the moment when he jumps blindly into the middle of a cafeteria full of bullies and saves Patrick from being beaten, but later, when he spends day after day with Patrick while he works through his emotional pain.

Charlie becomes the vessel for their healing, and finds some healing for himself in the process.  The cycle of destructive behavior is something that we see everywhere in society and talk about a lot.  But the cycle of healing is more enduring and eternal. And it is what we are called to do.

            “And in this moment, I swear...We are infinite.”

 In the words of someone no one can agree on, "We are the only Bible some people will ever read."

Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (2012)

Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (2012)  Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence (apparently vampires have the same neck structure as little Lego men.  Who knew?) including disturbing images (I consider CGI babies disturbing), some sensuality and partial nudity (Don’t worry… mostly what you see is their wedding rings.)

I am not performing a review of all of the Twilight movies at this time.  I promised that I would review this one, because it came out after the launch of the Facebook page, so I am reviewing this one. 

I will tell you truthfully, and my friends know this about me, that I have a lot of bias against the Twilight stories.  I know I’m not alone, but I also want it made clear that I keep giving them a chance to be great, and I keep feeling like they came close and then fell short.  So my dislike of the Twilight stories is not for lack of trying.

So I went into watching this movie with a very loud “LOOK FOR THE MESSAGE!” in my head.  A lot of pressure.  I kept watching the story meander towards something brilliant and then meander back away from it.  I should, I suppose, have just watched it for the fun of it and then let the message come to me, which it did several days later.

Quick Synopsis

In this chapter of the Bella/Edward/Jacob saga, Bella has come back to life a vampire after a terminal childbirth.  Bella is a newborn vampire, so she spends a while getting her vampirey adjustment out of the way. The baby Renesmee is fine, except for a serious case of being computer generated. Jacob has imprinted on Renesmee, so she has a dedicated wolf guardian (and by extension, the rest of the wolf pack) for the rest of what could be an eternal life.

            “Nessie? You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?!”

Unfortunately, the governing body of the vampires, the Volturi, get wind of Renesme’s existence and mistakenly believe her to be an immortal child (a vampire who was turned as a child) which is apparently incredibly dangerous, and set out to destroy the Cullen family.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

The Cullen family finds itself in need of friends and allies in order to save Renesmee and combs the world for people who will understand. Carlisle has friends in countries all over the place.  Vampire friends with superpowers.  (How are the Volturi still in charge here? Is it really  just the black capes?) They try to convince their friends to join them, promising that while they intend to amass in force with the help of werewolves, they are not, in fact, intending to fight the Volturi.  And oh, by the way, Renesmee is not an immortal child as she would appear, but something completely new and different in fact. 

Everywhere they go, their friends react with fear and disbelief.  Then little girl Renesmee uses some kind of psychic truth touch to make vampires see clearly how not a threat she is and win them over to their cause.  When Renesmee touches the cheek of her … um… not victim… potential ally, they see something that makes it all come clear. The only time we see what it is, she is doing it to her mother, showing her the first memory she has of her.  I imagine that particular memory wouldn’t be enough for most of the SuperVamps, so she must be imparting the truth to them some other way. Whatever that is, they are sure that Renesmee is what Bella says she is, and that defending her is the right thing to do.

So that by the time they get to the showdown, they have an X-Men-like cadre of gifted vampires and an ever-increasing pack of wolves at their backs. 

                        “Lot of red eyes around here...”

Meanwhile, the head of the Volturi sees this ‘immortal child’ crime as the loophole he has always needed to break the Cullen family apart. With the Vampire Code of Conduct on their side, the Volturi buys out every black cape store in Europe and shows up in force as well.  Duhn Duhn DUUUUUUUUHN.

Renesmee is given the chance to impart her special knowledge to the head of the Volturi, who knows instantly that she is not an immortal child. With that leg kicked out from under him, he has to inspire his people with fear of the unknown instead. 

            Maintaining our secret has never been more imperative.

Their response seems largely to be “Yeah, okay, sure. Grr” so I don’t know that he had to wax quite as eloquent as he did.  But it shakes his foundation enough to allow Psychic Future-Seer Alice to show him a lego-head popping vision of the next few hours of his life if he goes forward with his attack of the Cullens.

And having seen that grim future, he waxes eloquent again and his people retreat forthwith.

(Btw… what did that look like to his people? SPEECH ABOUT KILLING THE UNKNOWN… quick vision from Alice… SPEECH ABOUT EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN. Why didn’t they think he’d been brainwashed?)

Setting that parenthetical aside…  

Fear and Lies often come to us in giant armored cars. Truth often comes to us in the form of something small and fragile. It’s not really about which one has the most big guns behind it, although that is the way history tells its stories.  The reason Lies have to be surrounded by strength and power is because there is an inherent weakness in their structure that cannot be defended.  Lies fall apart.  Truth survives.  However the epic (largely ignored by the authorities) battle on the white rock had ended, the truth that Renesmee was not an immortal child could not have been destroyed. No matter what the Volturi did to the Cullens, they would never have become right.

            “A truthful witness saves lives, but one who utters lies is a betrayer.” Proverbs 14:25

If he had proceeded, in the few minutes of the battle, Aro’s whole empire would have fallen apart due to the indestructibility of the truth, and the utter fragility of his eloquent lies. And even if it didn’t fall apart then, it would have fallen apart eventually. The trouble with leading with fear is that you have to keep making people afraid. And people grow numb, over and over again.

And as for our SuperVamp/Wolfpack team of Freedom Fighters?  Smaller in number and led by their own motivations, they had amassed behind the weakest kind of creature.  A child.  And yet the strongest kind of banner, the truth.

            “and a little child shall lead them.”  Isaiah 11:6

I will NOT draw Christ parallels to the Breaking Dawn story.  I will not.  Because it doesn’t work anyway. I tried. They walk too far away from the self-sacrifice and just go into epic battle before that can happen, which derails the Christ parallel.   (SEE? So close to brilliance and then *poof* suddenly gone)

But I will say this.

We will follow with fear a leader who inspires us with fear.  But we have it in us to stand fearlessly against an unbeatable foe if we know that truth is on our side.  Because the distance between “We are strong enough to win, right or wrong” and  “Regardless of the outcome of this day, we will still know that we were right” is… well… infinite.

Maybe that is why when it came to all of our salvation, the truth came to us in the form of a soft, warm, terribly fragile and yet somehow unbreakable infant.

Sinister (2012)

“Sinister” (2012)  Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance

Rated R for disturbing violent images (Lots of them. Snuff films and stuff. Geuagh.)

            My friends love me. They really do.  Moments like this one are not an indication that they dislike me in any fashion. When I say “challenge me,” they love me enough to actually challenge me. 

            So it was two days after I moved “Crosses In the Window Panes” onto Facebook and started sharing my reviews that my best friends brought over this movie and said “Okay, Mindy… find the message in this one.”  We watched it together, my two best friends and my husband, wracking our brains for the spiritual lesson to be learned.

Quick plot synopsis:

            Ellison Oswalt is a true crime author with a few books under his belt, one of which, quite a while ago, was a success.  He purposefully moves his wife, son and daughter into a house where an entire family was horribly killed and a child has gone missing to inspire what he hopes will be his next big hit true crime novel. Perhaps he’ll even discover the whereabouts of the missing child and get to be a hero on national television again. Unfortunately, he discovers through the course of his investigation that there is something more than murder to the crimes that happened in his new home. The deeper his digs, the more disturbing and supernatural the story becomes until he and his family are hopelessly entangled in it.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

            We can all see the problem right from the beginning.  This is a man who protests to be searching for a missing child, trying to uncover what the police overlooked in their investigation to solve an unsolved crime. To do his part for justice and right. But every night before he goes to bed, he pours a whiskey, pulls out one of several VHS tapes of interviews about his bestseller and watches himself boast about his exploits to an invisible interviewer.  He ignores his wife’s pleas for stability and threats of separation, his son’s increasingly troubling night terrors, and the ever-more intricate and graphic wall paintings in his daughter’s room because he needs to focus on the investigation. But he makes time for those interviews.

            "I'm going to write the best book that anybody's ever read."

            Early in the move, Ellison finds a box in the attic containing film strips and a projector. His defining character illustration happens when he realizes that he has first person film evidence of not only the murder that took place at the house, but also several other more graphic murders, spanning back over the decades.  He dials the number of the Sherriff’s office on his phone to report the find, but his eyes fall on several copies of his bestselling novel, and he hangs up.

“Do you understand what you've done this time? The kind of jeopardy you've put your children in? Your marriage? Is there anything you won't do for your [bleeping] book?!” Ellison’s Wife

            Later in the movie, after Mr. Oswalt has already mired himself and his family in the supernatural murders, the family moves back to their previous unsold residence, and we get a peek at the life that Ellison was trying to recapture as we see his beautiful sprawling mansion.

“I have always supported you doing what you love, Ellison. But writing isn't  the meaning of your life. You and me, right here, this marriage: that's the meaning of your life. And your legacy? That's Ashley and Trevor. Your kids are your legacy.”

            So the message comes to us from something that all four Gospels agree that Jesus said.  “He that tries to save his life will lose it.”  Sometimes it says “He who tries to secure his life,” or “he who tries to preserve his life.”  The wording only changes the meaning a little bit. The point, in context, is clear. Because the next thing that Jesus says is “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” 

            So the warning is very simple. When we focus on holding on to what we have, we lose everything.

            Now, in watching this movie, one might suspect that the moment that Mr. Oswalt lost everything was when his daughter hacked him to pieces with an axe.  

            "Don't worry Daddy... I'll make you famous again."

But actually, the moment came much sooner. Actually, it happened before the movie started.  In a confrontation only a few minutes into the movie, the Sherriff tries to tell Ellison that he liked the first book, written years before. But in the books that followed, the author had gotten too many things wrong and guilty parties had been allowed to go free as a result.  Our Mr. Oswalt lost the life he was trying to get back long before he started this leg of the story. 

I don’t think very many of us are in the position of having to worry that if we spend too much time reliving the glory days, we will be brutally murdered by our youngest children.  (At least I hope not, but I am eyeing my 8-year old suspiciously as I am composing this review.) 

But if you take that scene in a metaphoric light, if we don’t let those days go, and focus on the ones that we are living right now, our children (or any of the things that we have created) will, in some way shape or form, force us to refocus.  Even if they have to tear us apart to do so. 

Our lives are a gift. They do not belong to us, so we cannot hold on to them by any act of desperation or bargaining. And the more we tighten our grip, the more star systems will slip through our fingers.