Weekly Watches: March 27, 2024
Sharing Our Recent Discoveries: Weekly Watches with 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See
The Promised Land (2023)
Directed by Nikolaj Arcel
By
When we think stories set on the frontier, our minds generally turn to the American West. The Promised Land offers a refreshing take on a familiar genre, bringing us back to the Old World for a gritty epic of survival set upon the desolate northern reaches of the Kingdom of Denmark in the mid 1700s. The drama unfolds when King Frederick V decrees that he will grant ownership to anyone who is able to settle and cultivate a portion of the inhospitable and unruly Jutland Heath. Captain Luvig Kahlen, a military veteran of common origin, played with stoic tenacity by the esteemed Mads Mikkelsen, accepts the challenge.
Stark cinematography with strong stylistic allusions to There Will be Blood and The Revenant propel a gripping drama of survival against the harsh elements of nature and the Machiavellian designs of spiteful aristocracy. The film explores man’s attempt to subdue to inherent chaos of life through his own drive and ambition. With nods to the “State of Nature” from Hobbes' Leviathan, Kahlen strives to contend with the absolute brutality of his situation through the force of his own sheer determination and will. But The Promised Land offers a layer of nuance, forcing Kahlen to come to the realization that the singular achievement of his goals may not be all that life has to offer. Human relationships take center stage as Kahlen must choose between what is really important in the end. Epic in scope and genuine in its well-crafted examination of the drama of life, The Promised Land seems a bit out of place for a 2023 release. However, many recent gems await discovery, particularly within the realm of foreign cinema.
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
Directed by Kevin Reynolds
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Hollywood needs to bring back sword movies; we had this, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Mask of Zorro, Lord of the Rings, Kill Bill, and Pirates of the Caribbean all at the beginning of the new millennium. Where'd all the great sword movies go?
The Count of Monte Cristo falls into one of my favorite film genres: swashbuckling period literary adaptations. Based on Alexandre Dumas' classic novel, this film follows the story of Edmond Dantes, a talented sailor who is unjustly imprisoned by a jealous rival and spends 13 years in the grim Chateau d'If. While there, he meets a fellow inmate who teaches him everything from economics to swordplay and plots his revenge against those who have wronged him, including his former fiancee, the beautiful Mercedes. The film has everything you'd ever want in a good adaptation: great performances from Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, and Richard Harris; plenty of twists, turns, and intrigue surrounding our main characters; pirates, life debts, imprisonment, daring escapes, secret children, duels, capes, hot air balloons, buried treasure, sword fights, and true love. The meditation on revenge and how it can distort one's soul and turn one into a sadistic image of your own enemies is strong through the second act, but is somewhat muddied by the obligatory Hollywood ending. Perhaps this would have worked better as a tragedy, but regardless it is a fun and dramatic ride throughout which always leaves me with a smile on my face.
The Ninth Configuration (1980)
Directed by William Peter Blatty
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Can selflessness cure insanity? This is the question at the heart of William Peter Blatty’s underseen psychological drama The Ninth Configuration about a military psychiatrist tasked with treating an unusual group of veterans suffering from PTSD. Moving away from horror after his megahit screenplay The Exorcist (based on his own novel) sent tidal waves through cinema, Blatty tried his hand at directing an unexpectedly different film, based on his own lesser known work. While The Exorcist has a few sensationalistic horror scenes that viewers vividly remember, they rarely remember that most of that movie is a contemplative slow burn on the nature of belief and the existence of spiritual evil. While The Ninth Configuration dabbles with brief moments of suspense, it’s far more interested in the contemplative side of Blatty, and even acts as a thematic companion to his earlier film. If The Exorcist was an exploration of the existence of evil, then The Ninth Configuration explores the existence of goodness and love in a fallen world.
Most of the film centers around Colonel Hudson Kane, a military psychiatrist with a mysterious past, and his therapeutic rapport with one of his patients, a former astronaut named Billy Cutshaw, who has renounced belief in God after becoming disillusioned with the presence of evil. The heart of the film lies in the way Kane engages with Cutshaw and probes his true reasons for anger at God, exploring the possibility of God’s existence based on man’s selfless acts:
“You're convinced that God is dead because there's evil in the world. Then why don't you think He's alive because of the goodness in the world? - If we're nothing but atoms...molecular structures no different in kind from this desk or that pen, then we ought to always be rushing, irresistibly, blindly, to our own selfish ends? So how is it that there is love in this world? I mean love as a God might love. And a man will give his life for another.”
The act of sacrifice, emulating Christ on the cross, is presented as the key to curing Cutshaw’s existential crisis, for through sacrifice, man can exert his free will, demonstrating he is more than just atoms. Blatty has always been enamored with the possibility of the divine, as seen through all his writing, but with this story, he didn’t hold back his belief that man is made in the image of the living, loving God, capable of choosing sacrifice for the brother he loves. How this Christ-like sacrifice ultimately comes about in The Ninth Configuration makes for a powerfully moving drama of redemptive suffering and hard-won faith.
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Directed by Terrence Malick
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War is hell
The Thin Red Line is the first movie Terrence Malick made after his 20-year filmmaking hiatus (1978-1998). It is much less commercial and more stylistically in keeping with his later work than his first two films, featuring many Malick trademarks including cutaways to nature, almost constant voice-over, and handheld/shaky cinematography. Frequently referred to as simply a “war movie,” this film, if anything, is an “anti-war movie.”
While this may sound like a trite cliche, it is somewhat eye-opening, at least for me, when reconsidering your view on war. Regardless of the politics, regardless of who's “right” or who's “wrong,” the people–the actual individuals–who are fighting, are almost always innocent. They are simply serving their country. They don't want to kill; they have to. War turns innocent men into killers. Nothing depicts this better than the scene in which an American captures three enemies and, instead of formally taking them as prisoners of war, he violently beats them, eventually killing them.
I would like to talk about two of the most striking and parallel scenes. I’ll refrain from detail to avoid unnecessary spoilers. The first scene contains a man accidentally blowing himself up by grabbing his grenade by the pin. As he realizes he will most certainly die, he begs his fellow soldiers to write home to his wife. Later in the film, a scene plays where a soldier receives a letter from his wife informing him that she has fallen in love with another man and asks for a divorce. War doesn't only affect the people who fight in it. It affects the people at home whose husbands, sons, and fathers have died. It affects the ones who are asking for divorce from the person they love out of loneliness. War is hell.
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