To make up for lost time, we’re posting two Mockingbird At The Movies columns this week. The first one comes to us from John “Stampdog” Stamper:
Paul Zahl’s talk at the Mockingbird conference this past weekend was about “abreaction” in art. In movie language we call these tearjerkers.
PZ explained to us that at the heart of every person is a Big Hurt, maybe more than one, and that one of art’s functions, at least from a pastoral Mbird point of view, is to let that suffering speak. When that happens, when we get to stop pretending that “I feel fine” (John Lennon), we are able to get to the reality of Good Friday and the core of human experience, which also means MY experience.
Because “around heah, every day is Good Friday” (Fitz Allison) and because that calendar day is actually almost upon us, I wanted to mention two movies which I promise you will enable you to abreact in a major fashion. Both are available from NetFlix.
King Lear is Shakespeare’s most penetrating look at the problem of being human. You will love it, I promise. It’s not high brow at all (if it was I probably wouldn’t like it). On the contrary, it is given in the form of a fairy tale: Once upon a time there was a very old king who had three daughters: one was good but two were bad of heart….
Lear is about what it means to think you are free, good, happy, wise, powerful, and together; then discover that in fact you were blind, foolish, weak, and wicked – and to discover this only in the crucible of suffering. Here’s a line from the play toward the end:
For I am bound upon a wheel of fire
That my own tears do scald like molten lead
Lear is about fathers, daughters, sons, hurt, rage, need, resentment. The plot is very simple (another reason I like it). Lear is so powerful that it was performed in Eastern Europe where no one spoke English and the audience immediately understood every moment in it. It is also about graceful loving (Cordelia and Kent).
There are two good versions of it on DVD: the 1998 Ian Holm production, and the 1984 film with Laurence Olivier and John Hurt. Those are the only two productions I really like (I can’t recommend the recent Ian McKellen film at all).
The Dresser (1983) is a very loose adaptation of Lear, with Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. It’s about a company of Shakespeare actors who are struggling to hang on during the London blitz in the early 40s. Ironically, they decide to do King Lear. The real connection between Lear and The Dresser are the film’s two main characters, Sir and Norman: who are very much like Lear and the Fool in Shakespeare’s play. You might say that The Dresser is like a modern day Lear, only told from the point of view of the Fool rather than Lear.
The Dresser is poignant and touching and heartbreaking; and very funny in places too. Absolutely stunning performance by Tom Courtenay.
If you can get either one, and have a moment to see them before Good Friday, I can’t urge you strongly enough to watch one or both. Or see them next month, it doesn’t matter when. After all, as Fitz says, every day around heah….
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9 responses to “MATM: King Lear and The Dresser – Time To Abreact”
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If John Stamper recommends it, Mike Burton will see it.
I know this sounds trite, but Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ still shakes me to the very core. I watched it again at the beginning of Lent, and cried as much as I did the first time I watched it.
PZ once suggested to his Thursday AM bible study that we take a lenten vow to watch that movie every day of lent, and I just don’t think I could do it if I tried! But I will watch it again this weekend as I prepare for Holy Week, and I will cry again.
The other movie that I’ll watch before Good Friday is a little more bizarre. It’s a video tape of the passion play that used to be staged every year by the pentecostal church in Alexandria, Louisiana. Jady, have you heard of it? It was called “Messiah”, and I don’t know if they perform it anymore.
The tape I have is a professionally produced film of the play from the year I actually went to see it with my then-fiance Kerry, and the way in which they handled the holy week scenes was so powerful that I cried when I saw it in person, and I know that the old worn-out tape will make me cry again as if for the first time.
(By the way, I’m sure that it is not available from Netflix.)
Anyway, that’s how I plan to abbreact in preperation for Good Friday, and I will definately try to make time for Lear and The Dresser as well. Thanks for the suggestion.
Jeff, Cate and I caught Gibson’s Passion on cable the other day, and I completely concur. We simply could not look away – there is nothing the least bit trite about that film.
And that play sounds absolutely incredible – do us all a favor and transfer it to dvd! pretty please?
DZ, if you’re really interested I will have that tape transfered to DVD. I sort of need to anyway…I’m not sure how many more holy weeks it has left in it!
Jeff. . . that sounds like a wonderful idea. I haven’t seen it, but would LOVE to have a copy available. . .
Hey Mike B. Thanks for the sweet thought, buddy.
Mikey B, among his many other gifts, is the man to go to here on Mbird if you want to know anything about hiphop. I didn’t know that before I met the guy last weekend. He’s amazing.
Love seeing Jeff H all over Mbird now. This is a VERY good thing.
Jeff, I like Gibson’s PASSION too. As in I like it a LOT. But you got me thinking about a couple things.
For me the whole Holy Week narrative is something I need to experience in time — almost as distinct ACTS in a drama, where I have time, even days between each stage in it.
And it strikes me as something that I often don’t get.
For example, we have coming up Palm Sunday, where in most Episcopal parishes we’ll be combining the experience of waving palm branches in joy for Jesus and then immediately crying out for him to be executed. Why do we do that? Bottom line I think is we feel like we only got one chance to get the asses in the seats, so we gotta do the whole story real fast in one service.
For me there is Palm Sunday… beat. End of chapter. We think and pray and experience on what that moment means. Then we rest. Then a few days later we have the Last Supper… beat. Pray, worship, think. Then we wait and that night pray and think about our Lord in Gethsemane, beat. Then the next day we think of our Lord beaten, stripped, nailed to a cross and finally dying alone. Then we spend time ALONE — we have betrayed our Lord and he is GONE. We spend Friday and Saturday and all Saturday night Christless and alone. We have time to absorb what has happened — the horror and misery of it. AND THEN… and only then… the stone can roll back.
Holy week is set up so that those powerful distinct episodes can be experienced separately — in a unity but with room to breathe in between.
Some of them can be combined — say in the way Gibson creates a single movie without break of Gethsemane, trial, torture, murder, and death of Christ. But the nature of a feature film — as opposed to a miniseries say, or a book with chapters — precludes a break, a place where we can stop and deal with what just happened. The movie has to keep moving.
So Gibson — and anyone who does a Passion play — has to decide what they are going to include. And in particular, they have to decide whether they are going to include the Resurrection. Include it and you deny the audience the time they need to grieve and contemplate what they have done. Jesus dies, and pops back out like bread out of a toaster. Cut it and you feel like you leaving this great piece of good news out.
My own feeling is that the answer is: don’t make a movie about it then. Choose a form (like holy week, or a miniseries, or a book with chapters) that gives you the time you need to breathe, especially between Christ’s death and his rising from the tomb.
It is this fear of silence and grief and aloneness — terror of the shadow of Good Friday, the long shadow of the cross over our life, and contemplating that, and allowing ourselves to DEAL with that — that causes so many parishes today to (in my biased view) rush Easter. Let’s start the “great vigil” as soon as possible, Saturday night in fact! Let’s put on our Cheshire Cat smile of “celebration” as fast as possible! Sat night is party time!
One of the reasons I thought of Lear and The Dresser is that they are distinct moments of Good Friday. They allow us true abreaction, time to grieve, time to deal with loss and loneliness and sin — without immediately trying to move too fast into Easter.
OK. Yeah. I know. That was way too long. Sorry… 🙂
Great points, John. I agree so much with you that we need space in which to mourn between Good Friday and Easter. We really do.
I find Gibson's Passion helpful to me for this reason: it brings the pain that our Lord endured front and center. It takes it off of the pretty pages of the Bible with the Lord's words in red and brings the whole bloody, heart-wrenching scene into the calm quiet of our living rooms and we can not look away.
It reminds me of what Mathew Brady did with his photography: he brought the blood and death of the Civil War and threw it "like a dead pole cat" into the gentile parlors of polite society so that no one could hide from the realities of the War.
Now, the pentecostal passion play effects me for a different reason. I watched it with Kerry tonight, and I have to say it may be just a little too kitch for this crowd, but as you all have shared so generously and openly with me, if I can get it transfered to DVD I will gladly share it with you–we will either have a good laugh or a good cry together.
In the pentecostal passion play they use a series of very elaborate live still lifes set to music in order to portray every step of Good Friday from the Garden to the Tomb, and what is powerful to me is that these are not faces from 2000 years ago, these are faces of actors that look like us today, you and me. And when the centurion says "Nail his hands", he says it in a thick drawl that is immediately familiar to a southern ear.
And how this abreacts me is this: it drives home the fact that average people just like you and me played our parts in the crucifixion. Indeed, if the crucifixion is a kairological event, existing not only chronoligically but also in God's time (I believe Dr. Paulson mentioned this idea in his Afternoon Q&A), then that same event could just as easily have transpired today with you and me yelling "crucify, crucify him" as it did some 2000 years ago.
After all, we have the same bound wills, the same sinful natures, and nothing has changed except through that once and for all saving, kairological event. And the thought immediately comes to my mind, "Lord, it could have been me killing you. It could have been me mocking you, scourging you, casting lots for your garments, spitting on you and cursing you." And I am reduced to only being able to say through my tears, "I'm sorry, Lord. I'm just so sorry for what we did to you." And then finally, simply, "My Lord and my God" is all that I can say. And there is a real saving power in that. This happens every time I watch that scene.
Now you guys may just get a good laugh from it, and that's OK, too. To each his own, after all.
Hey your passion play sounds great, Jeff. Definitely not silly.
Your idea about how to meditate upon the passion is a lot like Luther’s. He says that to meditate properly means:
“that you deeply believe and never doubt the least, that you are the one who thus martyred Christ. For your sins most surely did it…. Therefore, when you view the nails piercing through his hands, firmly believing it is your work. Do you behold his crown of thorns, believe the thorns are your wicked thoughts, etc.”
He contrasts that with ways NOT to meditate upon the passion, such as blaming the Jews, or treating it as a magical talisman (crucifixes) to stave off suffering, or by treating him as a pitiable tragic victim (the women who wept for him and by so doing exempted themselves from blame and the cross story itself).
John, thank you. I did not know the theology behind the way it made me feel, I just knew that it felt right (ie, in aaccord with the Spirit), so I just went with it. Now I’m so glad to know that I’m not just some crazy guy, and that Luther affirmed that those feelings are good to have.
John, I’ve ordered both King Lear and The Dresser from Blockbuster and can’t wait to view them. If you suggested them, they have to be good.