A couple of random thoughts on James Wood’s Book Against God (after an hour of heavy snow shoveling).
First. If Wood is arguing for atheism, then his only convincing argument in this book is, “Philosophy on its own proves nothing—you need to prove your beliefs through your life.” And Thomas Bunting never learns this. To the end, he remains a selfish, irresponsible man who can probably look forward to an old age without friends or family. Of course, this is a valid point that goes both ways: Christians cannot truly argue for their faith without a solid Christian walk with God. And this is something that Thomas Bunting’s father (Peter Bunting, an Anglican priest) has learned:
“You know, [says Peter, speaking to his wayward son] not long before you were born, I had a crisis of faith. Curiously, it’s why I became a priest. Or rather, I resolved the crisis by leaving the intellectualism of the university for the devotion of the priest’s life. I didn’t know the answers to any of my questions, and decided in the end that living a Christlike life was the only answer to them. It’s why I am interested in Tim Biffen, because he so reminds me of myself when I was a young man. It’s very very important not to be corrupted by theology.” (page 225)
Second. Going off of that last quote, it appears that The Book Against God is really quite the opposite. Peter Bunting (the priest who abandoned a theological teaching role for the Church) is the one who seems to have his head on straight. And despite his son’s snide despising, Peter very obviously loves him, tries everything he knows to love his son back into the faith. Peter’s efforts are admittedly feeble (he doesn’t do much more than challenge his son intellectually), but I feel that the end leaves some window of hope, some chance that his son will stop playing at Jonah and admit that he’s just lying to himself.
Third. Atheism (at least as described by Thomas Bunting) is pure immaturity. It’s for people who don’t want the responsibility of worshiping a God, who don’t want to be told what to do, whose chief law is themselves. Bunting writes at the end:
Oh, Father, there were days so exciting when I was a little boy that each morning was a delicious surprise, a joy adults can only mimic when they are fortunate enough to make a long journey by night and rise in an undiscovered place in the morning and see it in the first light. When anyone asks me, I say that my childhood was happy, and for once, for once, I am not lying. Wasn’t it an orchard, my childhood? But why, then, the worm? Why the worm? Tell me. (page 257)
This end is moving, until you realize that Thomas Bunting simply needs to grow up. His complaint with the world is not really, “Why are you so rotten?” but “Why do you require so much of me?” And even secularists can shake their heads at that kind of thinking.
In the end, I really don’t know what Wood was aiming at. If he’s arguing for atheism, then he’s ironically made it very unattractive and unappealing. Regardless, after reading The Book Against God I felt that I had been tricked into finishing it: it wasn’t until I was near the end that I realized that Bunting had no solution to his troubles, no way out of his follies. This book is like watching a traffic accident happen in slow motion, and despite the thoughts inspired above, definitely not worth reading.
Whether you love him or hate his ever-spastic gut, you should read this profile of Jim Carrey’s existential-cinematic roles, by James Parker of The Atlantic.
In the year 2038, when we’re all living out of corroded Kia Sportages, beneath an ozone layer so threadbare you can toast a slice of bread simply by hanging it out the window, scavengers will make a discovery. In the basement of a ruined midwestern mall they will find, miraculously preserved, a fresco depicting the totemic movie scenes of Jim Carrey: Carrey as Truman Burbank in The Truman Show, standing in a private elevator shaft of rainfall on an otherwise dry beach; as Fletcher Reede in Liar Liar, being attacked by the pen in his own hand; as Charlie Baileygates, the schizophrenic highway patrolman of Me, Myself & Irene, strangling an enormous cow; as Bruce Almighty’s Bruce Nolan, with the power of God in his index finger, causing fire hydrants to pop and the skirts of desirable women to billow up around their waists; and as Ace Ventura, bent over, hands on rump, ventriloquizing through parted butt cheeks. After rubbing at the wall with ragged sleeves, the discoverers will fall back in awe. And the voice of the tribal priest will be heard, apostrophizing this huge graffito. “Oh, modern man,” he will say, in a voice rich with pity. “How lonely you were, and how divided. And how you loved to talk out of your ass.”
Read the rest of “The Existential Clown.”
I’ve been revisiting the Criterion selection at the local movie rental store of late. I have a difficult relationship with foreign art house films, one in which I am continually reminded of my own American sensibilities when it comes to narrative and character arc. However, I have to say that the French can do existential drama better than anyone (the closest American cinema has come to genuine philosophy is old school film noir, in my opinion).
Last week, I saw Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar, and then last night, Jean-Pierre Melville’s long-lost Army of Shadows, which was finally released in the US in 2006. While the former has some exquisite moments of pathos, it sometimes relies too heavily on Important Philosophical Ideas. Meviille’s film, on the other hand, manages truly to break your heart. Army of Shadows is about several members of the Resistance during the dark middle years of the Second World War. The opening shot is of a long column of German soldiers, devoid of personality or human feeling, marching through the Arc de Triomphe. In fact, all the German nemeses in the film are similarly unhuman — lacking in feeling, compassion, faith, and personality. This is not the result of poor scriptwriting; this is at the heart of the film. The title refers to the French Underground, who all adopt fake names and maintain a high level of secrecy, even with each other. Two brothers who both work in the Underground, often in close proximity, never realize that they are each fighting for the same cause, and therefore lose any true kinship they may have shared in the inconsequential past. There is a great deal of distance in this movie. And there is a corresponding emphasis on human trust (or lack thereof).
Perhaps the most heartbreaking scene in the whole movie comes when the protagonist, a Resistance commander by the name of Philippe Gerbier, and one of his associates kidnap a young agent who has betrayed the movement. They take him to an abandoned apartment where a newly-inducted member of the Underground has prepared a room for interrogation. But when they arrive, they inform the novice that they have no intention to interrogate. In order to protect the Resistance network, they must execute the traitor. What follows is the most affecting execution scene I have ever seen in a movie (and don’t even think to mention Braveheart in the same breath). In the empty apartment, the would-be executioners can hear children playing next door, and decide against shooting the traitor. So they search the house for a knife as the young prisoner cowers in the corner, helpless. There is no knife to be found, so Gerbier decides they must strangle him with a kitchen towel. Finally reaching a breaking point, the youngest of the executioners breaks down, saying that he has never done “this” before. The elder Gerbier replies, “It’s our first time, too. Isn’t that obvious?”
The fight in which the Resistance finds itself is no abstract battle of Freedom vs. Tyranny, nor even one for the honor of France. From what I recall, the only time you see the tri-colors of the French flag, it is associated with the corrupt Vichy government. (In this way, Army of Shadows is the counterpoint to the La Marseillaise scene in Casablanca, another great movie, but for entirely different reasons.)
In contrast to all the usual WWII clichés, which usually draw the conflict in terms of absolute good vs. absolute evil, Melville shows how humans cope with the absence of faith and comradeship. In order to survive in a world where you can trust no one, you have to forswear both friendship and kinship. If you have to hide your name from even those with whom you are most intimate, can you still claim your own personhood? In one scene, a Resistance fighter is threatened by his captors with an ultimate penalty: if he does not reveal his own true name, they will kill him and he will die anonymous, never able to reclaim his identity, never remembered, never loved or mourned.
In all this, Melville keeps asking, What makes us real, more than just vapor?
The moment of crisis strikes Gerbier when, like Camus’ Stranger, he faces his own execution. In the long, spacious dungeon of his prison, a Gestapo officer lines up a group of condemned prisoners (some of whom, unlike Gerbier, are innocent of any real crime), and points first to a machine gun at one end of the room, and then to the far wall at the other. He offers the prisoners a deal: if they can reach the far wall, they’ll be allowed to live until the next scheduled execution. When the other prisoners begin to sprint to the wall, Gerbier defiantly refuses to run. But when the bullets begin to land all around him, his legs propel him forward involuntarily (how he escapes, I won’t say). Later on, he is filled with self-loathing; how did the Gestapo officer know that, in the end, he would run for his life, just like the rest?
Why did he run? I think the answer runs counter to Gerbier’s initial self-accusation: it wasn’t just cowardice that made him flee — it was his essential humanity. Gerbier and the rest of the Resistance are placed constantly in situations which require them to act contradictory to anything they would have done before the war. They must set aside their humanity. They are transformed into murderers. They turn their backs on their own family. They are become mere specters of what they once were. But in that moment when Gerbier’s feet overrule his desire to prove the Gestapo wrong, he finds that he is still a person with real human desire and fear and — perhaps — even salvation.
* * *
For further reading, see the reviews of Roger Ebert and Anthony Lane.
