Sundance Review #2

I’m not quite sure how to lead into this second review of 4 more incredible films. I’m also not sure if I’m more emotionally fatigued than I am physically fatigued at this point. From long days, to late nights, to early mornings and lots of walking in freezing cold weather I am drained yet energized simultaneously. I was hoping for some pivotal life experience when I got here and Sundance has not disappointed. A few of the films I watched in the past two days will probably stick with me forever and continually shape, or rather inform, the way I look at the world as a theologian artist. So let’s get into it.

Infinitely Polar Bear is a movie starring Mark Ruffalo as a man named Cameron who is a manic-depressive, bi-polar father who is tasked with taking care of his 2 young daughters while his wife goes away to earn her MBA. The movie takes place during the 60’s where stay-at-home dads are completely out of the norm and women rarely take the role of the breadwinner in the family. Mark’s wife, played by Zoe Saldana, is black, which makes for even more social headaches to navigate during a time when civil rights were a constant issue.

While there is quite a bit of family drama, I found the overall story to be wonderfully heart-warming. Cameron is a father who is totally obsessed with his two little girls despite their resentment of him and all the awkwardness he brings into their lives due to his complete lack of social skills. The film depicts the complexities of children and their parents who don’t always see eye-to-eye through many adversities yet maintain a beautifully loving relationship. While Cameron occasionally has explosive behaviors and poor reactions to his medication, he constantly redeems himself by making delicious meals for the kids and all their friends, taking them on boat rides, letting them make forts all throughout their apartment, and even staying up all night to sew a flamenco dress for his youngest daughter’s school performance.

Ultimately, Cameron and his wife end up separating due to their life’s different directions, but his wife realizes how much better off her daughters are with Cameron because “he’s always around” as his daughters said. Cameron thought this was a bad thing, as he is a lonely man who loves his daughters so much that he always hovers around them, but his wife knows that’s the kind of parent they need and that’s not the kind of mother she will be if the kids live with her while she works 12 hour days in the business world of New York City.

I loved the portrayal of a non-traditionally dysfunctional father who is overbearing and controlling, to one who loves his daughters so much that it breaks social norms for the good. While this type of dysfunction father still causes a great deal of tension, he is still a father figure who can be admired for his determination to provide for and love his daughters no matter how badly his mental illnesses plagues him. Essentially it is this undaunted love of his daughters brings healing to his life and the lives of his daughters.

The Internet’s Own Boy is a documentary about Aaron Schwartz, who was a boy-genius and Internet activist fighting for fair access to online materials and combated unethical copyright laws. Aaron fought corrupt laws like PIPA and SOPA (look them up if you’re really curious) and eventually won the fight in congress thanks to his social media skills and intense love of online data. His biggest stand was against JSTOR, which is an online academic journal catalog that you have to pay to access. People who are in college often have free access to these journals because their schools pay a fee to unlock the journals for their students. Aaron saw this as unethical because he believe all knowledge should be free in order to provide citizens with as much information as possible to improve the world. Aaron got caught hacking the JSTOR website at MIT and was eventually prosecuted by the Federal Government. The FBI put multiple felony charges against Aaron in order to make him an example to all “hackers” threatening the government, which is a larger and larger problem these days. Aaron had battled with depression so fiercely that when he was faced with possibly going to jail for 35 years he couldn’t take it. Aaron committed suicide on January 11, 2013.

At the end of the film they showed another young prodigy who at the age of 14 began reading medical journals the he found for free from the JSTOR website. He became fascinated with curing cancer, and sent off his ideas about testing for pancreatic cancer to Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Eventually his testing method was found to be revolutionary and he is currently working with oncologists to further his method of testing for pancreatic cancer, which has such a high mortality rate because we find it so late. All this to say, this is one great example of what Aaron was fighting for and hopefully brings meaning to his life.

Calvary rocked my world. I still find myself a little haunted by the film. It had a Hitchcock-like feel to it that maintained an eerie feeling of unease throughout the entire film, even when the dialogue was caused eruptions of laughter. The film opens with a shot of the main character Father James taking confession from an anonymous man who says that he was raped by a priest every other day for 5 years from the time he was 7. He provides graphic details and ends by saying that he is going to kill Father James in a week. His reasoning is that Father James is a perfectly good man who has done nothing wrong, therefore it will attain greater attention as a statement against the Catholic Church’s failure to care for the innocent.

Father James takes this threat seriously and begins trying to make amends with his daughter, whom he abandoned, as well as resolve the many outstanding conflicts within his small Irish community. His town is rife with affairs, prostitution, corruption, drunkards, outspoken atheists, inept clergy, and an overwhelming amount of bitterness. Father James does his best to intervene in the lives of his community, but the story serves to show how you can’t really help people who don’t want to help themselves. He realizes the best thing anyone can do is forgive. This is most emphatic during his reconciliation with his daughter whom he abandoned when his wife died. Her death lead to Father James’ pursuit of joining the Catholic Church and his daughter’s attempted suicide. Their renewed relationship is the one bright light in the film.

The story gets bleaker as the week goes on as Father James’ church is burned down and his dog is violently killed. I know this all sounds exhaustingly depressing, but the witty dialogue and shear irony of many of the character’s situations creates a morbid sense of comedy throughout the film.  At the climax of the story, Father James is about to leave his small town and flee from the murderer who is to kill him the next day. He encounters a young woman who lost her husband in a freak car accident, and her profound determination not to abandon her faith spurs him on to return to his home and face the killer.  Father James meets his killer on the beach, who ends up being one of the main characters seen throughout the film who seemed relatively kind and passive. Just when you think the killer might change his mind and let go of his bitterness caused by years of sexual abuse within the church, he shoots Father James in the head and leaves him laying on the beach in a Christ-like pose. The movie ends in silence as we see Father James’ daughter visiting the killer in prison. As she cries and begins to speak, the movie ends.

This was the first film I saw when no one clapped as the movie ended. I was speechless and just sat with my hands folded. Father James was such a loved, endearing character that everyone began to hope for his survival. However, the writer wanted to tell a different story; A story of sacrifice that led to the hardest thing any of us is ever called to do, and that is to forgive those who have hurt us the most. When that moment comes and we are face to face with someone who has fractured our soul so painfully, what will we do?

The Overnighters is the movie I have taken the longest time to write about. It blew me away and left me with tons of questions. It’s a documentary about a Lutheran church in Williston, North Dakota where the oil boom happened several years ago. People flocked to this small town in hopes of a better life and a better job to provide for their families. Thousands of men packed up their cars and moved to Williston without anywhere to live and the city was left with a dilemma about how to deal with them. (Watch or read The Grapes of Wrath and you’ve basically got an understanding of this story). The controversy arose when Pastor Jay began letting men stay the night in his church and in his parking lot, and even in his own home, until they could get on their feet. Many of the congregation hated this as it turned their beloved church and community into a homeless shelter of sorts.

This problem was manageable until the local paper got wind that the Pastor was harboring sex offenders. The community was outraged, but the Pastor defended this as the man who was staying with him and his wife and three kids was guilty of having sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 18. Jay saw this man as worthy of a second chance and only truly guilty of making a stupid, typical teenager decision.

Sadly the “Overnighters” program gets shut down because the church doesn’t have proper fire codes in place (like overhead sprinklers). Jay is heartbroken and all seems to be lost as he closes up his program. Then the last 5 minutes of the film happens.

Jay is sitting down with his wife to tell her they need to go somewhere to have a difficult decision. In an unexpected turn of events, it comes out right then and there that he had an affair. He had several affairs. He had several, homosexual affairs. It was jaw dropping to say the least. The movie ends on this note and I was pissed off because I felt like I had been tricked into watching a movie with two completely separate story lines, one of which had no resolve or details. Thankfully, we had the filmmakers and Pastor Jay come to our class to answer questions. They also spoke after the film ended at Sundance and Jay surprisingly still maintains his faith and is still married to his wife. It was incredible to hear him basically preaching to an audience at Sundance about how God has a plan for your life and that even your brokenness can become part of His plan for you. It was surreal to hear someone speak about Jesus to a huge crowd of secular filmmakers. While I was completely opposed to the documentary’s director, I loved the fact that Jay’s story could be used to share Christ with people who would never dare go to church, watch a Christian film, or read the Bible. It was the highlight of my trip so far and an experience I’ll share with people for the rest of my life.