13th Favorite Movie - American Beauty

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

The tagline found on posters and billboards for American Beauty was "look closer". These two words beckoned the viewer to look past what they may first see on the surface for something deeper, something hidden underneath. Unfortunately, many people missed it. Granted, this is a seedy film, a dark film, and a challenging film. But there is profound truth to be found here.

On the surface, the suburban family that is at the center of American Beauty seems to be idyllic. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening play two married, "successful" parents, with a healthy teenage daughter... but underneath there is conflict waiting to boil over, pain that has not been addressed, dreams that have not been pursued. After first seeing them as an ideal family... then seeing them as a horrible one... writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes pull the carpet out from under your feet again, showing you the heart of each of the characters and the beauty that exists there.

I like finding beauty where it is least expected. I get a kick out of finding something true, something lovely, in people, songs, books, movies (like this one) or anything that others have written off as having no redeeming qualities. And that is a major theme of this movie. Finding God in the ordinary, or in the mess. One scene in the movie is of one teenager showing a friend a video he took of a plastic bag blowing in the wind. Here is what he says:

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever."

But the movie is not just about the relationship between people and God, it is also about how we treat one another. At one point someone asks Kevin Spacey's character "how are you?" and he stops and thinks for a moment and says, "It's been a long time since anybody asked me that." It is really sad that his wife, daughter, co-workers and friends never stopped to ask how he was doing and took time to listen. This film is about how we need other people in our lives. The first line of the movie is a teenage girl, looking directly into the camera, saying, "I need a father who's a role model..."

It is also about the relationship between us and our "stuff", and how if we are not careful, our possessions will end up possessing us. In one scene, Annette Bening's character interrupts a rare romantic moment with her husband to scold him because he is about to spill beer on the couch. His response: "This (couch) isn't life. This is just stuff. And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts." Truth from an unlikely source.

Covenant pastor and Fuller Seminary professor Robert Johnston wrote an entire book comparing the message of American Beauty and other movies to the message of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. It is called Useless Beauty: Ecclesasiastes through the Lens of Contemporary Film and is available on Amazon. Somehow I don't own this book... yet.

A Colonial Wedding and Lessons in my Lack of Invincibility

Life has been up and down and all around lately, and now that I'm back to some semblance of normalcy, it's time to reflect and share. In the past few weeks I've learned a lot of lessons, all of which point back to how blessed I am.

At the end of July Danny left for a 10-day youth mission trip to Alaska. They had an amazing time and he has some great stories to share, but he'll have to blog about that himself. (A little encouragement from a handful of our readers might help.) While he was gone I realized how glad I am to be married to him! It was no fun being a bachelorette for ten days. Without my sister to come keep me company and listen to my stories I may have gone nuts. Luckily, five of the ten days he was gone I was also traveling. I flew to Williamsburg Virginia to attend the wedding of one of my Japan teammates. Four of the five of us were at the wedding, and we called the fifth on speakerphone to have some team time again (we missed you Timbo). I can't explain how lucky I am to have these friends! Getting together with them is so much fun, and there are parts of me that no one else understands like they do (such as my Japanese vocabulary).

Leah, the bride, was raised in Williamsburg and is very proud of her colonial heritage, so the wedding took place in the Historic Jamestown church. The church is the oldest in the US, and legend says that Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married there (although facts say otherwise, but oh well). It was beautiful! The reception was at the Williamsburg Inn, another colonial historic building, and also where the queen stayed recently for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown. Leah and her new husband Frazer were glowing all day and I'm so happy for them! Leah picked a fantastic guy to marry, and you can tell he's crazy about her. He's from New Zealand so I really enjoyed spending time with him and his Kiwi family and friends. Did you know New Zealanders call swim trunks "togs"? Our Virginian hosts were also very gracious (and generous to loan us their van multiple times) and it was great to get to know Leah's family and new husband. We even talked Frazer into getting pedicures with us (no polish of course) and we reassured him he wasn't the first poor guy to be dragged into a nail salon with the three of us. I think Tim is really glad to finally have some more guys around with Frazer and Cass's fiance Alex!




The wedding and time in Virginia was awesome, but getting there was another story. I won't go into the whole saga, but the short story is that my connecting flight from Dallas to Richmond was cancelled so I was almost stranded in Dallas (and the Blocks almost had a surprise houseguest, which would have been fun!) but I really needed to get to Virginia that night to help with the wedding rehearsal the next day. I ended up flying into Norfolk around 2 am, in a different city than both my rental car and my luggage. About 24 hours and a million phone calls later I met up with both the car and my luggage, and I learned a lot of travel lessons in the meantime. Here's a rundown for you future travelers:
1) Don't prepay for a rental car. You might as well have signed the contract in blood and no changes can be made, even if your flight was cancelled and you are stranded due to no fault of your own - unless of course you want an upgrade, then they are glad to change your reservation and take your money!
2) It doesn't matter what flight you're on, what city you land in, or what it says in the computer -- the only thing that matters is what is on the luggage tag, your bag is going there no matter where you end up.
3) Never assume anything a person tells you is true. Call back and talk to someone else and double check. Phrases like "Oh sure your friend can pick up your car" and "I'm re-routing your bag right now so it will be on your flight" cannot be trusted.
4) Don't use Hotwire. They don't understand that you actually want to get to your destination on the same day you left home.
5) Having friends who will: a) loan you their parents car to drive to an airport in the middle of the night - twice; b) drive to the airport to pick you up in the middle of the night; c) search the airport for your lost luggage while you're describing it to them over the phone; d) loan you their clothes and toiletries until yours arrive; e) be worth flying across the country for -- that's priceless!

So the travel problems were my first lessons in my lack of invincibility. I have never packed an extra set of clothes in my carry-on, and for domestic flights I don't even take a toothbrush or contact solution (or expensive items and important medication) in my carry-on. I scoff at the possibility of losing my luggage because that never happens to me! Needless to say I've been a bit humbled.

My second lesson in my lack of invincibility came Monday after returning from Williamsburg. Coming home from work I rear-ended someone in stop and go traffic and did some serious damage to my trusty Honda. No one was hurt thankfully, so it's just a big headache. And I feel like a dummy. After the initial tears and fears and nightmare of logistics, I've been actually calm about the whole ordeal. That's not to pat myself on the back, but I think after my initial freak-out I realized how materially blessed I am to even have a car, let alone three between Danny and me. Additionally, his youth group van, which was going to be my back-up this week, broke down and is now stranded somewhere outside of Chico. So I'm borrowing my sister's car this week and possibly my mother-in-law's next week, which is again just humbling and reminding me of how lucky I am! It's unbelievable how many options I have for transportation and how many people are willing to help. There are people around the world who walk three hours one-way to work, or just to find food. I don't dare complain.

It's been an interesting lesson to examine how materialistic I am. Can I honestly say "it's just luggage" or "it's just a car"? Or am I more attached to those things than I should be? The night I came home after my accident, Danny was still gone so it was even more frustrating to be home alone after a stressful day. I was worried about my car and how I was going to get around the next few weeks, and the beginning of Psalm 23 came into my head: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want." So I started reading Psalm 23, and when I finished I read Psalm 24 which begins "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." I had to have a few of my posessions taken away (albeit temporarily) to realize that I do have all I need, I should not be in want, and all I have is God's anyway because he has given me everything good in my life.

Sorry this turned into a mini-sermon. I don't blog often but when I do I can't seem to stop rambling. I'll end with a few more fun pictures from my adventures with Cass, her fiance Alex, and Tim in Jamestown. After the happy couple was married the four of us took a day to sightsee (and sweat a lot!) in the historic Jamestown Settlement. We got to climb on replicas of the British ships that settled there, try on colonial armor and tour replicas of a Native American village and Colonial fort.

14th Favorite Movie - We Were Soldiers

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Before I get to the movie, I want to remind everyone what this list is all about. About a year ago, I came up with a list of my 50 favorite movies. These were not what I considered to be the best movies ever made, but the ones that I consider to be my "favorites". I did not spend much time nitpicking whether I really liked #32 more than #33, but rather what 50 movies would make the list and what "tier" they would be in: top 5, top 15, top 25 etc. So just keep that in mind when you're thinking, "how could a great movie like x be #18 when a piece of garbage like y is #15"? My (and Bethany's) blog, my list, my rules.

All that to say... I am a bit surprised at how high I ranked this movie! I wanted to watch it with Bethany the other night but I must have loaned the DVD out to someone. If you have it, please give it back. We watched Saving Private Ryan instead, which altogether is probably a better movie than this one. But here is why I thought so highly of We Were Soliders:

-It does a great job of depicting the first battle in Vietnam to involve U.S. forces. And the way it ends says a lot about how the Vietnam War overall turned out for our country. But let me warn you, this film is not for the squeamish. Director Randall White is from the Saving Private Ryan school of shooting combat - in one scene, a soldier tries to move a fellow comrade who has been burned, and his skin comes right off his legs like a turkey drumstick.

-It has some great performances in it. Mel Gibson plays the Lt Col. Hal Moore, who leads a troop of mostly young soldiers who have never seen combat. Madeline Stowe is his wife back home. Sam Elliott plays another veteran officer, while Chris Klein plays a young up-and-coming soldier. Greg Kinnear is a helicopter pilot. Barry Pepper trades his sniper rifle from Saving Private Ryan for a camera, playing a journalist embedded in Vietnam. The DVD extras include interviews with some of the real-life people who are portrayed, and while this is a Hollywood big-budget film, it feels authentic.

-It shows the effects of the war on the soldiers' wives and girlfriends who are back home. Everyday, the army sends messengers bearing telegrams to notify the women whose loved ones have fallen in battle. Halfway through the movie, two of the women, one of whom lost her man already, decide to deliver the bad news themselves every day, face to face. This illustrated to me the concept of being "Wounded Healers" that Christian author Henri Nouwen talks about. The women are the right ones to provide healing to other women because they know them, can relate to their pain and can grieve with them.

-It has some insights into leadership. The line that was in all the trailers is when the new father/soldier Chris Klein asks veteran father/officer Mel Gibson how he feels about being a father and a soldier. Gibson replies, “I hope that being good at one makes me better at the other.” Many people have told me recently that they think that my being in youth ministry will help me be a better father someday, and I hope this is true. I guess I could relate a little bit to this line and the movie overall because I too have wondered how I would do balancing fatherhood and youth ministry someday. I am pretty sure writer/director Randall White is a Christian – he also wrote Braveheart and is currently working on a film version of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters due out in 2008. There are also a couple deleted scenes that lend weight to my theory – one is of Mel Gibson’s character praying with Chris Klein, and another features one of the wives singing Amazing Grace in church.

I think a big reason why I put this movie so high up on my list is because I feel that it deserves more attention… so go see it if it sounds like something you would enjoy. For some people, the presence of Mel Gibson in this film will prohibit them from watching it, just as Tom Cruise's real-life persona keeps some people from seeing his movies. I guess that is not something that has ever bothered me, I can get pretty sucked in while watching a movie and forget about the actor's personal life. I mention these two - Gibson and Cruise - because between the two of them, they are featured in 3 of the next 13 movies.