Two Current Pop Films That Deal With The Soul

So many ideas, so little time.

There were several things I wanted to blog about this month, but time just slipped away as I recovered physically from moving into a new home. I dislocated a shoulder carrying too many clothes on hangers at once, and a repetitive strain injury flared up in my hand and wrist, making it difficult to type for two weeks.

Then I wanted to blog about meeting up with my old friend Jon in Tucson, where he was visiting his parents. We knew each other from when we were interns in Washington, D.C. many years ago, but reconnected through Facebook. I had asked him to join me on a trip to Sonoita, the Arizona version of Sonoma wine country in California, an hour south of Tucson. There's much I could write about the trip personally, but I wrote about it for publication instead.

Then I went to Las Vegas for the annual girlfriend trip with my friends Roxanne, Maggie and Susan. Again, much could be written about that trip from a spiritual angle, along the lines of being delivered from evil, but I will save that for another time. Now I'm on a "trip" at home, keeping my father-in-law occupied as he visits our half-furnished home, trying to get some work done here and there, and slipping in this blog out of sheer determination.

During the long, busy month, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of films, too. The blockbusters didn't seem to have any spiritual connections when we chose them, but ultimately any film worth its salt has some scene or climax in which a character shows what he or she is made of deep down.

"District 9," directed by Peter Jackson, the writer/director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, explores what would happen if an alien spaceship landed above Johannesburg, South Africa, and the strange creatures aboard were stranded on earth. What ensues parallels the lives of native black South Africans, who were relegated to shantytown slums for decades and treated as less than second class citizens. Anyone who has ever read "Kaffir Boy" by Mark Mathabane would recognize the similarities.

A freak accident that causes a government official to develop some of the characteristics of the aliens -- and to walk a mile in their shoes, so to speak --changes him from a cold, conformist bureaucrat to a man with compassion for a race of beings that on the whole are murderous and repulsive--but there are a few redeemable members.

In the new Bruce Willis vehicle, "Surrogates," the United States has evolved into a nation of slugs who sit in front of computers all day and virtually operate robot versions of themselves to go out into the world and work and experience life in ways they are afraid to do.

Willis, playing his usual cop role, investigates the murder of two surrogates--leading to the deaths of their operators--and discovers a sinister plot to kill others. The film takes on the notion of the modern obsession with appearance, youthfulness and unnatural perfection versus the granola crunchy embrace of all things organic and acceptance of ourselves and others for who we are, warts and all.

Without giving away too much of the plot, Willis and his wife are more comfortable conversing to each other through their surrogates than they are in person. His wife, in fact, hides from him in her room, which he makes easier since he frequently works an opposite night schedule.

"Surrogates" contains lots of action scenes that seem drawn from a half a dozen other action films, such as "Terminator," "Total Recall," "AI," and "Minority Report." This gives it the derivative feel of many of these films, my greatest disappointment in watching them. It seems as though a bunch of 20ish screenwriter guys get together in a room and argue over which favorite scene to lift out of another film and adapt to the current one.

One Bruce Willis film that had such incredible potential in terms of emotion, "The Fifth Element," was ruined by such childish screenwriting, combined with an intentional "B" movie sensibility and cartoonish bad guy aliens.

Aside from its lack of original action, "Surrogates" does strike a note with its empathy for the imperfect human and our need for connection, spirituality and love.

Investigative Journalism at Its Finest

Lee Strobel is a journalist’s journalist – the kind of hard-boiled newsroom reporter who came of age during the heyday of investigative journalism at the Chicago Tribune. It’s no surprise then that he was an atheist much of his life, since skepticism and even a thin layer of cynicism are common traits of journalists

For many in the field, this is due as much to the apparent inability to quantify something as ephemeral as faith, as it is a form of self preservation not to allow oneself to feel too much and too deeply. Coming in contact with so many victims, as well as so many people who victimize – especially when you’re in a big city – takes a toll on the open-hearted person. It is safer to feign feeling that to actually experience it.

Strobel’s long path into exploring Christianity and then espousing it, took breaking down some tremendous barriers.

He wrote his first persuasive book, “The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus,” in 1998. It became the first of his series of books investigating Christianity from historical, factual, philosophical and scientific angles. The tough journalist interviews experts in their fields, and discovers that there is plenty of evidence for believing in God, and specifically, in Jesus.

What’s really impressive is Strobel’s attention to detail in his books and his voluminous footnotes and references to other works. It’s not usual to find more than a hundred works cited in a single volume.

Lately, I’ve been listening to his book “The Case For A Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God.” It reminds me that sometimes print is a far more useful medium that audio, because I would like to go back and reread some of the passages to do with scientific principles and experiments that once were used to discredit faith – and now are being discredited. Also, I imagine that some of the images referenced are in the book, but of course can only be described on the recording. Ah well, I guess it means that I’ll have to buy the book, too.

Strobel’s latest book, “The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks On The Identity of Christ” is next on my reading list. On paper.