The Last Station (2009)

Eighty-year old Christopher Plummer plays a powerful role of  Russian author Leo Tolstoy with Helen Miren playing his wife Sophia and James McAvoy at Tolstoyan follower and newly appointed secretary.  This film was approved by the Tolstoya family and tells the story of the final few months of Tostoy's life, the conflict he faced between loving his family who knew him as a man and caring for his "disciples" who likened him to a prophet.

The movie begins with a quote from Tolstoy, "Everything I know, I know only because I love." After 48 years of marriage, and facing the loss of her husband to men she called conspirators, Sophia is desperately clinging to her husbands hand, begging him to remember his love for her.  Watching was heart wrenching, she was not a mad woman at all, but Tolstoy was done fighting with her, done with his life of wealth.  He wanted peace and knew no other way to find it but by leaving.

Throughout these scenes of marital strife, their secretary, Valentin, discovers love for himself.  He is stuck in the middle of trying to reconcile the two to remember their love for each other, while reconciling the reality of Tolstoy, the man with Tolstoy, the prophet. 

All of the actors do a tremendous job of being REAL throughout the film.  I think Leo Tolstoy would be pleased.

Ananda Balasana - Happy Baby Pose

Deep Breath.
Lie down on your back.
With bent knees, bring your ankles above your stomach.
Hold the bottoms of your feet with open hands.
Spread your legs (remember, babies need room for diapers).
Relax your hips.
Roll a little.
Feel the play as your body relaxes into bliss...ananda.

Another description of the happy baby pose

The past week was all sorts of stressful.  Saturday night, after writing and writing, to vent my frustrations, I found myself prompted into the Happy Baby pose while praying.  I don't know what it is about this pose.  Maybe, it is the absolute vulnerability of it.  Unless you are completely stiff in your legs, there is no strength required.  It is a gentle stretch.  On my back, rolling my legs gently as babies do, I cannot stop myself from smiling.  Is it my own baby memories?  Or memories of watching my little ones do this very thing, untaught.  I feel my heart, throat, and head open wide and all is forgotten...except the bliss of exhistence.  I am.  Ananda.

Gossip

I talk with people about people. I talk about my stuff, his stuff, and her stuff with people I trust and only because I'm trying to find the best way to help work through things.  I've been known to make ROTTEN decisions in my life, and paid for them exponentially.  So, sometimes, I just want an outside perspective.  Sometimes, I just want to vent.  Sometimes, I am enlisting help because my arms don't stretch that far or my efforts don't seem to be enough.  I don't know why, but I feel seriously responsible for putting my hands in.

The brilliant news is, others don't.  Apparently, people can talk all about me, my husband, my kids and our problems ALL day (yes.  we ARE that entertaining.) and never lift a finger.  Now, I should digress from this topic to say there are people in my life that are all-hands-on-deck. In fact, they are some of the very people that participate with me in the process of the first paragraph.  There are people that I've shoved right on in to the back of my closet, forcing them to rub shoulders with the skeletons, and know for themselves just how badly it smells in there -- who have come out smiling and loving me all the more.  But, there are the others. 

Hooray.

Have you ever justified people not getting involved in your life because they didn't know there was a good reason to?  Today, I get to face the fact that not all people function the way that I do and hope that it isn't because there is an invisible neon sign on my front lawn blaring out "Quarantine:  This home is spiritually putrid.  Enter at your own risk." 

Won't you be my neighbor?

Prince Caspian 2008

Last night, I finally saw this movie all the way through.  Now that the family home theatre is all set up, we've been having fun with movies-mom-hasn't-seen-though-we've-played-them-a-thousand times.  I must confess that I have never read the complete series by C.S. Lewis, though I have every intention to do so.  Other books keep getting in the way.  Or, the calendar does -- I started out reading with this as our family read out loud book, but lately, we rarely have everyone home.  I was delighted to find so many subtle applications of Christianity throughout the story.  I'm sure there is no way to tell this story and avoid them.  Lewis wasn't just a theologian, he believed in practical, everyday religion that changes who you are, and those lessons are definately here without being all up in your face about it.

I was not surprised to find that the WETA Workshop in New Zealand had their hands in the costume and weapons creations.  These are truly fine quality.  I was surprised again at the quality of the acting in this film.  So many "children's" movies are just cheesy and overdone (one the light and dark sides), but this one is decidedly not. I can't get over the expressiveness of Georgie Henley's (Lucy) face and have every confidence that she will be able to grow as much as the story does.

I think my favorite part of this movie, was just when the fight scene is ending...Prince Caspian refuses to take the life of his uncle in revenge for the death of his father because he does not want to become that sort of king.  It says a lot about him.  What happens next is very telling of the world -- oh, the treachery!  Was anyone else shocked when the other lord betrays the Usurper King, blaming it on the Narnians, and the General changes his loyalties to match this brand new wind?  I didn't see it coming.  Yet, it didn't surprise me. 

There were subtilties within the story that the director/writer/actors did a good job of implying without showing the details -- the many lives lost at the castle battle, for example, or the three men killed by the general as propoganda against the Narnians for troop morale. 

I was impressed with the crew names as well, seriously the most diverse crew I've ever seen.  Though it helps that the movie was filmed in places like Poland and Slovenia, with New Zealanders working costumes, and actors from the UK.  And now, I don't know how to finish this blog.  Though it was a good movie, I don't know if I'll every watch it from start to finish again.  hmmm...

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This book was a gift from a friend of mine.  It isn't the type of book I would normally pick up on my own.  However, it is one of the best reads of my post-edumacation required list of reading phase of my life.  McCarthy uses the most stark, barren form to describe events in a world that is, I assume, post nuclear fall out.  The descriptions are cuttingly simple, as if taken straight out of the minds of a starving man, still in shock from so many losses, and desperate to survive with his son.  McCarthy writes with limited punctuation, limited conversation, and, in 256 pages, grips the reader by the throat and says, "This is real possibility for your future."

I can still see the endless mummified bodies on the road, the ash, the gray sky.  I can still hear the wheels on the shopping cart they push through snow and sand to keep their supplies close.  I can still feel the urgency to get out of the cold, where miniature, cannabalistic armies have gathered into the south, hoping for food, hoping for sunlight, hoping for sane human life to show you that all is not lost.  If all is lost, why struggle so hard to keep your son alive?

I highly recommend this book.  We live in a very comfortable world and take for granted so many gifts.

Of thee I sing...

Last night, my husband read some news before going to bed. There had been loads of facebook stati complaining about military pay, but no links to anything detailing what in the world was going on. (We don't have a television under the assumption that the news is not exactly reliable, most programming obscene, and refuse to watch the commercials.) It turns out the U.S. Government is arguing hardcore about the current budget. With a deficit like ours, one would think that if anyone's salary were to be cut, it would NOT be the military. (Doesn't anyone know that if you make a man desperate to feed his family and give him a gun... oh, wait...we're more civilized than that. We're Americans.)
       I am not even going to pretend to know all of the ins and outs of a budget for a country as large as ours or a government with their hands extended into just about everything they could be globally and right up into the bedrooms of its citizens. Honestly, the more I know, I wonder how we can possibly be using the term "capitalism" to describe our culture of socialistic entightlement any longer. And am I ready for what is coming? Absolutely not. I'm sure I'm part of the problem -- every year, all of the taxes my family pays are returned to us because we are too poor to pay them and I am thankful for the return.
        The brilliant news is, I am not the only one feeling down on my own "sweet land of liberty" that is now in the bondage of debt. We are becoming the laughing stock of the world... America in comedy... I'm sure this is the most mild that is being said. If we are quietly turning the people of the world into the typical TV personality -- complacent, no character, no patience, no strength -- there will be no reason for Heaven to help us. It would be better for us to fall.

Religulous (2008)

I should preface this entry by stating that this was suggested by my brother so I could understand his current views on god/religion.  What I saw and heard left me in a little bit of shock.  You see, Bill Maher's "documentary" of the "current state of world religious views" was really nothing more than an excuse to show off just how rude and intolerant someone can be when they've decided they are right and you are WRONG.  This was extra hard for me to swallow because my brother and I had been brought up in a home of religious tolerance.  We learned very young that not everyone saw the world or lived their lives in accordance to the tenants we were taught on Sunday.  Instead of condemning people for choices or seperating ourselves from people with different beliefs, we embraced the differences, found beauty in the variety, and gained good friends of many different ideas -- Hinuism, Buddhism, Islam, Juddaism, Agnosticism, Athiest...
       I had to force myself through this movie.  I could have choked on Maher's openly arrogant, insulting attitude toward the people he was "interviewing."  Even though he is a well known comedian, his position as documentarian might have encouraged him to leave the satire at home.  If he were an agnostic asking others questions about how they "know" or if they really believe Jonah literally spent three days in the belly of a big fish, he may have allowed for an open and interesting dialogue.  But, I don't think that was his purpose.  He wanted the people of America who believe in god to look ridiculous and attempted to do so by cutting them off, mocking their replies, and inserting snippets of hollywood films/news footage, etc. with written commentary.
       Throughout the film, Maher asks the question, "What if you're wrong?"  I don't know if the people he asked wouldn't entertain the idea because they were afraid it was a blasphemous idea to entertain.  I don't have that problem and would like to answer it... What if I am wrong about the "God lens" I see the world with?  What if I am wrong about the afterlife I believe in and spend my whole life attempting to better myself, my family, and my neighborhood in kindness and being a wise steward of the life I see as a gift?  What if I spend my mornings and evenings gazing at a beautiful sky and find that there was no painter as I believe there is?  Is that really so bad, Bill?  You seem to think that a life of selfish indulgence and pleasure seeking is the way to go.  But I don't value those things.  So, even if it turns out that I am wrong, I am not wasting my life in believing there is a Heavenly Father who hears and answers my prayers.  I leave you to choose for yourself how you would spend your days.  I must say though, that I don't believe the Armegeddon you fear will be avoided if everyone treated others with the disdain and disrespect you did throughout the film.  What if you're "wrong"?