Why do we watch movies? If we read in search of more life, as Harold Bloom is fond of saying, then we watch movies, this book proposes, in search of wonder. We watch movies in search of awe-inspiring visions, transformative experiences, and moments of emotional transcendence and spiritual sublimity. We watch movies for many of the same reasons that we engage in religion: to fill our ordinary evenings and weekends with something of the extraordinary; to connect our isolated, individual selves to something that is greater than ourselves; and because we yearn for something that is ineffable but absolutely indispensable. This book, through an exploration of some of the most intriguing films of the past two decades, illustrates how movies are partners with religion in inspiring, conveying, and helping us experience what Abraham Joshua Heschel refers to as "radical amazement": the sense that our material universe and our ordinary lives are filled with more wonders than we can ever imagine, and that it takes spiritually—as well as cinematically—trained eyes to uncover these ever-present ocular gems. In addition to illustrating how films utilize religious themes and theological motifs to convey a sense of wonder, this book offers new interpretations of key films from canonical American directors such as Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, and the Coen brothers.
Оглавление
Daniel Ross Goodman. Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Foreword
Permissions
Introduction
To the Wonder
Notes
Renoir
Note
The End of the Tour
Tragic Brilliance
Loneliness, Suicide, and Religion
Is the Universe Tragic or Comic?
Note
Driving to Nebraska
An American Road Trip
Man Is Not a Machine
Notes
Boyhood
Epiphanies of the Ordinary
The Compression of Time
Religious Feelings
Notes
Exodus: Gods & Kings
Notes
Ex Machina
Can Imago Dei Apply to Artificial Intelligence?
Raising Questions in a. Science-Fiction Film Tradition
Jewish Tradition Offers. a Response to These Scenarios
Notes
How to Overcome the War Within
The Lessons of Adaptation
Go Down into the Depths
The Warning of Dorian Gray
Overcoming the Divided Self
Notes
Moral Gravity and Spiritual Audacity
Notes
Magic in the Moonlight
Inside Llewyn Davis
Notes
All Is Lost
Notes
Reading Movie Reviews as a. Religious Experience
Notes
Hollywood, the Oscars, and the Missing Modern Jew
Note
The Greatest Beauty
A Movie in the Mold of Murnau, Metropolis, and The Rules of the Game
Note
The Big Short
Note
La La Land
Notes
Blue Jasmine
Notes
The Wolf of Wall Street
Notes
Museum Hours
Notes
Life Itself
Notes
Theotropic Motifs in Gatsby
Notes
In Tree of Life, Jewish Roots
Note
Leonardo DiCaprio, Meet St. Augustine
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Films Referenced
Index
About the Author
Отрывок из книги
Movies can provide escapist entertainment that dumbs down the mind and passes the time into oblivion. They can also connect us to the transcendent, fill our lives with existential meaning or lead us to search for the depths of being. In this book, Daniel Goodman opens our eyes to the spiritual feast available for the taking in films.
Under cover of reviewing movies, Goodman leads us on a journey to meaning and inspiration. For the religious searcher, he breaks us out of the narrow box of canonical literature and leads us to browse in the enchanted forest of movies. For the spiritually inert, he awakens us to go beneath the surface of life and allows films to enable us to see the world with new eyes.
.....
As the elder Renoir was in painting, so was his son in film: the acclaimed director Jean Renoir created himself by crafting artistic films of enduring cinematic value. Even though he was destined to become one of the greatest directors of early cinema, Jean Renoir himself doubted whether film could ever be “artistic.” During the film, we hear Jean expressing profound concern about whether film could ever approach the aesthetic and intellectual plane of painting. “Film is not for us French, it’s for the masses,” he worries about his chosen field of art. “We have too much artistic baggage.” Yet, with triumphs of the celluloid such as La Règle du jeu, he would go on to prove himself—and other early cinema skeptics—startlingly wrong.
Jean Renoir and the film Renoir alike make the argument that a film, just as much as a painting, can be a lasting work of art. An actor who creates a poignant theatrical performance with his or her voice, body, and gestures, and a director who captures these actions on film, edits them, and shapes them into an aesthetically valuable work of cinema, engage in creative acts as significant as the art of painting. And indeed, just as Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s paintings have lasted, Jean Renoir’s films have endured the test of time. Both have become works of art that people can “hold in their hands.”
