Go read some online discussions about Malick’s work and you will see debates with little gray area. Insults fly in all directions. Malick’s detractors call his supporters pretentious, whereas his supporters call the detractors obtuse and shallow, or worse, lazy moviegoers. The fact is, Malick’s films are difficult. They explore deep issues and not in a linear fashion. Malick never holds the audience’s hand. During The Tree of Life’s theatrical run last summer, one theater printed a disclaimer for potential viewers, telling them to read up on the film before purchasing a ticket because no refunds would be given. It is funny to think the theater management would have to warn people about a, “uniquely visionary and deeply philosophical film.” It is as if the theater was telling customers, “If you don’t want to think, avoid this movie.” (The last time I remember a disclaimer for a movie was for The Blair Witch Project, and not for being philosophical, but for the motion sickness some viewers experienced.)

I write all this to say I do not think many of Malick’s detractors are insipid or dense. Granted, there are some who would likely be more at home with a Transformers movie, but I do not think many fans of that series are watching Malick’s pictures. Most of my friends who do not like Malick’s work have no problems with challenging, serious, and ambiguous films. When watching Malick’s work, they could praise the beauty of the cinematography, they could sense that they are about something, but what that something was remained frustratingly out of reach. They simply find Malick’s movies to be too wandering, even impenetrable.

This post then is my attempt to offer a primer on how to understand Malick’s films to people who are curious about them or who were turned off and want to give his works another shot. I make no claims to being a Malick expert — I simply like his films and after each one have felt enriched.

Structure and Pacing. Every subsequent film of Malick’s has become less linear and more contemplative. There are long periods in which little seems to happen. This is not to say his films have no direction, but that the pace is deliberate, and the films are not so much about what happens, but about how what happens reveals the larger themes and questions to be explored. Do not expect tight three-act plots. In fact, do not worry much about plot altogether.

Voice-Over Narration. This is perhaps the most distinct aspect of Malick’s movies. Every film of his uses narration, but just as Malick ditched linear plots over time, he has also eschewed traditional voice-overs. Badlands had only one character narrating and the voice-overs usually filled out the story. Days of Heaven also had only one narrator, but her voice-overs were more personal reflections than service to the plot. By The Thin Red Line and the later films, several characters speak, asking contemplative questions, ruminating on universal problems, or praying to an unnamed, “You.” In movies, narration can often be a crutch to move the plot forward. Malick uses narration to reveal the deeper, philosophical, spiritual, and existential matters with which his characters wrestle.

Beauty and Nature. One thing most people — even the detractors — can agree on, is that Malick has one of the best eyes in the business. His films are almost painfully beautiful. Malick’s movies give a lot of images to the audience that often seem irrelevant to the film. In my opinion, not a single shot is wasted in his movies. The images of sunflowers or birds may not relate directly to the plot, but they are filling out some of the grander themes in the films. In The Thin Red Line we will see a soldier dying and then a bird flying across the sky, but the connection is never explained and at first glance seems disjointed. The bird could mean several things — it could be the last thing the soldier sees, it could be his spirit leaving his body, it could be nature’s indifference to his death, or it could be a reminder that the soldier is just as much a part of nature and the war within nature as the bird is.

Openings. Malick will not hold your hand as you watch his films. They will challenge you. They require that audiences put in some work. But I do not think his films are impenetrable. In fact, I would argue that in most of his films, especially his three most recent works, he offers the audience a sense of what themes he will explore right at the beginning. The Thin Red Line opens with a voice-over of one of the nameless soldiers, asking, “What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?” The rest of the film shows that the war humans wage is not separate from the natural world, but an extension of it. It wonders if there is any hope for us to live differently. Is war as much a part of our world as the oceans? The New World begins with Pocahontas praying, “Come, spirit. Help us sing the story of our land. You are our mother — we, your field of corn. We rise from out of the soul of you.” What follows is a story of the land and how two cultures meeting and colliding changed that land forever. Finally, The Tree of Life opens with a quotation from the book of Job 38.4,7, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation…while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” The film then explores many of the same questions that Job asks. Why is there evil and death? Where is God as the way of nature seems so violent? It also offers some of the same answers as Job, namely that we are finite beings who do not possess the expansive view to comprehend God’s plans.

How then should one watch? Here I will to sound like I am talking out of both sides of my mouth. On the one hand, Malick’s films are best viewed by letting the experience wash over you like a wave rather than trying to remain objectively outside the movie. On the other hand, the viewer cannot remain totally passive. These movies require the audience to work in three ways. First, the films call the audience to wonder what the films are saying. Second, the movies bring the audience to ask the same questions the characters ponder and come up with their own answers. Third, the films demand the audience reflect on their own lives and how they intersect with the story onscreen. If most films are like novels, then Malick’s films are more like poems. Bad poems either telegraph their meaning to readers, or are so obscure that no one other than the poet can relate. Good poems require readers to pay attention to the words and their sounds and to notice how the poet changes their meaning. A poet may use a word because it feels right, not because it is the clearest form of communication. Some of the best poems cannot be fully understood on the first reading, but demand that the reader sit with it, let the poem sink into his or her mind, and to bring her or his life into the stanzas as well. Malick’s films resemble poetry in many of these ways.

Film
2011 was a fairly strong year for new releases. I also finally watched some of the classics that any lover of film is supposed to know.

• 12 Angry Men (d. Lumet, 1957) Deserves to be shown in every high school civics class. Maybe every prospective juror should see it too given how many people have difficulty with the concept of the presumption of innocence.
• 127 Hours (d. Boyle, 2010) Filming the unfilmable. I hugged my arm for an hour afterward.
• Bicycle Thieves (d. De Sica, 1949) Simple and extremely heartfelt. Holds up after several decades.
• Breathless (d. Godard, 1960) Shows its age, but clearly influential. Patricia asking Michel to explain all his idioms is great character development.
• Contagion (d. Soderbergh, 2011) Unsettling to watch in a crowded theater. Awesome female protagonists.
• The Fighter (d. Russell, 2010) Great performances ranging from the sympathetic to the I’d rather use battery acid for lip balm than be related to that person.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (d. Yates, 2011) Strong ending to a wonderful series. Splitting the last story in two films made for much better pacing.
• Hoop Dreams (d. James, 1994) Some of the most utterly gripping suspense in a sports movie ever, and it really happened.
• Hugo (d. Scorsese, 2011) Sweet ode to imagination. Worth seeing in 3-D.
• Inside Job (d. Ferguson, 2010) The 2008 economic meltdown clearly told. Be prepared to be infuriated.
• The King’s Speech (d. Hooper, 2010) How a film about a super-rich monarch could be an underdog story is beyond me. This film, however, pulls it off.
• La Dolce Vita (d. Fellini, 1960) Episodic. Slow. Somehow mesmerizing.
• Moneyball (d. Miller, 2011) Awesome movie about lateral and unconventional thinking. Great performance by Brad Pitt. Love how the first stylized action sequence is of David Justice taking a walk. This film is one of the only positive things an A’s fan has going for them in recent years.
• Super 8 (d. Abrams, 2011) Fun nostalgia for movies that were made twenty to thirty years ago. Made me remember riding my bike everywhere with my friends during long summer days.
• The Tree of Life (d. Malick, 2011) One of the most beautiful films ever made. Read my review/reflection here.
• Wings of Desire (d. Wenders, 1987) Deliberately paced story about angels watching humans. Opens the eyes to the image of God in all humans.
• Winter’s Bone (d. Granik, 2010) Terrific use of place. The impoverished Missouri setting is its own character.
• Zodiac (d. Fincher, 2007) Creepy film that emphasizes the detective work of the press and police instead of glorifying the violence of the killer.

Books (Fiction)

• Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Broken Bat (Moench, Dixon, Aparo, Nolan, Breyfogle, Balent, 1993) Fun, enjoyable, and brisk. Surprisingly good character development. Keeps Batman in his own universe — I’m not a big fan of Justice League type stories.
• Cities of the Plain (McCarthy, 1998) One of McCarthy’s most accessible books. Builds wonderfully on the previous two novels of the Border Trilogy and has that sense of impending doom that is classic McCarthy, while also holding out glimmers of hope.
• The Crossing (McCarthy, 1994) The first section of this second book of his Border Trilogy contains some of the strongest writing and pure storytelling McCarthy has ever accomplished. Unfortunately, the next two-thirds of the novel are not nearly as engrossing and the book slows to a near-halt at several places. It thankfully ends on a strong note with one of McCarthy’s most evocative images.
• Red Mars (Robinson, 1992) Part one of a trilogy on the colonization of Mars. Inventive and gives a strong sense of plausibility in its depiction of the science and psychology needed to make a home on a different planet. The second book, Green Mars, unfortunately crumbles under its own weight as it attempts to focus on politics.

This list makes it look like I didn’t read much fiction this past year. I reread a couple of novels — so they are disqualified — and some other novels that were just OK.

Books (Non-Fiction)

• Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection (Volf, 2010) Ruminations on how Christian Scripture and contemporary life intersect. As the historical-critical method of biblical study falls back into the pack with all the other methods of interpretation, it is good to see theological readings have their time in the light as well. And it’s even better that Volf is doing that reading. The essays in this book show creative, yet faithful interactions between the Bible and some of the issues that we face today.
• Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One (Roxburgh and Boren, 2009) A much easier introduction to the missional church and its theology than the wonderful 1998 tome, Missional Church, edited by Darrell Guder. Roxburgh and Boren offer strong examples in ways that will not tempt readers to miss the forest for the trees. They do the appropriate deconstruction of the Christendom, consumer-driven, and attractional church models, as well as offer a good constructive approach for becoming a missional church, a church that follows God out into the neighborhood. They wisely do not offer a formula and instead offer several reflections and narratives. Admittedly at times, it does feel like the second half of the book is an advertisement for some of their consulting services.
• Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Mother Teresa and Kolodiejchuk, 2007) This is the book that created a stir when it came out because it revealed just how deeply vexed Mother Teresa was by doubt and what theologians call, “The Dark Night of the Soul.” Not the easiest read as it feels repetitive, but it remains insightful and inspiring in a very nontraditional way of inspiration. Reading about Mother Teresa as she holds on to what she knows for certain while she doubts just about everything else challenges me since I can give up easily at the first sign of difficulty. I’m very grateful this portrait of a hero of the faith exists. It gives hope to us who find certainty hard to come by.

Television
We don’t have cable and due to Mt. Diablo’s interference with signals, we only get three Spanish-speaking channels. Thus, all our television viewing happens on the internet. I haven’t seen many of the dramatic shows people seem to love, so I’ll have to catch those on DVD in the future. Here are some comedies I like.

• The Colbert Report. Awesome, awesome satire. His recent ribbing of Donald Trump is so cathartic.
• Community. The meta aspect of this show is extremely enjoyable. Even better, the writers never forget characters are always more important than gimmicks.
• The Daily Show. The warm-up to the 2012 election cycle has been terrific.
• Modern Family. Another great ensemble cast. The writers took their time establishing the characters and now it’s a blast to watch them mix up the pairings. The show reminds me of I Love Lucy in that we laugh at the characters and their hijinks, but we love them and the show never feels mean.
• Parks and Recreation. I had written this off after the first few episodes of the first season, but it has really come into its own. A very sweet and silly show.

Songs
My music intake was low this year and while some of my favorite artists put out new albums, none of them really blew me away. Instead of mentioning albums then, I’ll emphasize the songs I liked most in 2011.

• “All My Favorite People,” Over the Rhine. A prayer for my friends who endured an unbelievably difficult year. Given the pattern of loss and pain that has fallen on my loved ones over the past decade or so, I’m beginning to think odd years suck.
• “Blood Bank,” Bon Iver. Simple and beautiful. It seems like my wife plays this just about every day and I don’t mind.
• “The Cave,” Mumford & Sons. I love the folk-roots revival these guys create.
• “Death In His Grave,” John Mark McMillan. This ain’t no, “Jesus is my boyfriend,” praise fluff. McMillan’s new hymn is one of the few contemporary praise songs emphasizing that deep biblical theme of Jesus’ victory over death. Thank God for that victory.
• “Funeral March,” Patrick Cassidy, composer. Perhaps it’s embarrassing to say a piece from a movie trailer is one of my favorite songs of the year. But that film — The Tree of Life — is incredible and this song fits it perfectly. “Funeral March,” is not in the actual film, but it easily could have been. Beautiful and celebrative and mournful.
• “In Your Eyes,” (New Blood Version), Peter Gabriel. Listen to the richness and joy that comes from the orchestral sound. I love how Gabriel continues to rework his classics.
• “Lacrimosa,” Zbigniew Preisner, composer. Another track associated with The Tree of Life. This piece plays during the breathtaking creation sequence. “Lacrimosa,” brings tears to my eyes. I don’t care if you don’t like classical music — it is nearly impossible to deny the beauty of this song and Elzibeta Towarnicka’s soprano. I think I’ve listened to this song more than any other in 2011.
• “Little by Little,” Radiohead. A strong song from the lukewarm album, The King of Limbs. Still, a lukewarm Radiohead album would be a masterpiece for 99% of the bands out there.
• “Longing to Belong,” Eddie Vedder. The cello gives a terrific lift to this song that sets it above the rest from the album, Ukulele Songs. The album as a whole is a mood album — if you’re in a mellow mood, it’s great and if you’re not, it’s not.
• “Midnight Sun,” The Choir. A song a friend turned me on to as he was enduring tragedy and loss. A heartfelt prayer.
• “Solsbury Hill,” (New Blood Version), Peter Gabriel. The orchestra perfectly complements the lyrics expressing liberation and potential.
• “Someone Like You,” Adele. Her voice is unfairly good.

Favorite of All Media, 2011ish

• The Tree of Life

In 2011 Terrence Malick released one of the most splendid pieces of cinematic art I have ever seen. I try not to use so many superlatives, but this film earns them. I have never seen anything like The Tree of Life. It is a film that one must let wash over them, take them on a journey, and yet, the viewer cannot remain passive. The viewer must consider his or her own life, not just the lives of the characters on the screen. I thought of my life growing up as I watched the O’Brien boys navigate childhood and early adolescence. I thought of my relationship with my father. I thought of deaths of family and friends. Most of all, I thought about God. This film is grand, ambitious, and utterly remarkable. After first viewing it, my wife and I went into our backyard and looked up at the stars, talking about the film and all the things it made us remember. Both of us expressed that we found ourselves praying throughout the movie as if we were looking at a religious icon. This is a film that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The film makes these bold statements: all of creation can be told in the story of one family and one family fits into the story of all of creation. In print that sounds audacious and even pretentious, but it is a testament to Malick’s skill that the film does not come across as bombastic. Rather, it deals deeply and sincerely with some of the most difficult questions we ever face — those questions we often are afraid to ask because answers seem so elusive.

The Tree of Life requires viewers to bring something to the film. As I watched the screen, I found myself drawn into prayer, slowly, like walking a labyrinth, challenged by the questions the characters face. The central character, Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn), struggles with modern life, especially as he remembers the death of his younger brother at the age of nineteen. Jack’s state leads him to a series of existential questions like Job. He remembers his life as an adolescent (Jack at this stage is played by Hunter McCracken) and the lessons his mother and father taught him. These lessons set up the framework for the contradictions and challenges that vex him. In his questioning, Jack receives a vision of the creation of the world.

Jack’s mother (Jessica Chastain) says in the film, “There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.” Mrs. O’Brien embodies for him the way of grace, juxtaposed with his father (Brad Pitt), who resembles the way of nature. Mrs. O’Brien is gentle, reminding her three sons to look at the world with wonder and gratefulness. Mr. O’Brien, on the other hand is stern, a disciplinarian, who equally loves his children, but sees them and the world at large as things to be controlled. Jack has difficulty reconciling these two forces. Despite the contradictions between nature and grace, we see that Mr. O’Brien is capable of grace when he plays music with ease. He is at his most forgiving when Jack’s younger brother is learning the guitar. There may be a conflict between nature and grace, but somehow they are not so much contradictions as a paradox, and ultimately, we see as people gather in a vision like Heaven that the way of grace triumphs. In this paradox, the audience senses the larger hand of God, inscrutable and yet present and loving. As the preacher asks, do only those who receive blessings see God? Do not those who have had things taken away also know God?

What are we to make of the obvious beauty and terror in our universe? As we see in the creation section of the film, the world was beautiful and good, teeming with amazing creatures, who were themselves wonderful and violent, and then came an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Utter devastation. Without that important step in the history of life, however, human beings would have never emerged. Was the asteroid good or bad? Do we actually have the categories of thought and capacity of wisdom to make that judgment? I have been vexed by what we have traditionally called “natural evil,” those acts of evil that happen without any conscious effort by human beings, such as tornadoes, heart attacks, and many other natural phenomena. These phenomena challenge my belief in a good God more than any other problems. Even though I cannot call tsunamis good, I can neither call the realities of our physical world simply evil. For example, earthquakes are some of the most destructive forces in the world, killing millions throughout history. Yet without earthquakes, we would not have the Sierra Nevada mountain range, on which giant sequoia trees grow. The giant sequoias are the largest living things on the planet, behemoths of beauty and grace that live for millennia. The trees can only grow at elevations between 4,000 and 8,000 feet. Without those destructive earthquakes, the result of plate tectonics thrusting the Sierra Nevada up into the air, the giant sequoias would never exist. Furthermore, scientists tell us it is likely that the movement of the Earth’s plates, which leads to our earthquakes and volcanoes is also necessary for all life to exist. Would we prefer a world without earthquakes or without giant sequoias and human families?

The Tree of Life leaves viewers with more than they brought. For the past few days, I have seen all of my world through the film’s lens. Sunsets are wonderful miracles. The sermon I heard Sunday morning dealing with fathers reminded me of scenes from the film of Mr. O’Brien, as he struggles to love his family despite his imperfections and pride. I read Psalm 8 before and after the film and the second reading felt so much richer and evoked so much more awe in me because scenes from the film ran through my head as I prayed those beautiful and ancient words. The characters are amazingly fleshed out and many viewers will likely connect with Mrs. O’Brien the most, but it being Father’s Day weekend when I saw the film, my father, who died almost four years ago was on my mind. Scenes of Mr. O’Brien squirting his sons in their yard with the hose, as my father did with my brother and I, brought me to tears. I remember the giant hand of my father on my shoulder or neck as a child, encouraging or disciplining me. In these ways, I found The Tree of Life to be an icon, guiding me into praise of the God I will never fully understand, but to whom I am consistently drawn.

I have been pining all week to go back to the theater to see The Tree of Life again. It is a film I will purchase. I cannot recommend it highly enough, but because people tend to love or hate Malick’s films (I’m on the love side, if you haven’t figured that out yet), I will give people some disclaimers. If you have seen any of Malick’s other four films (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, or The New World), you will be familiar with his contemplative style. Most films are analogous to novels, whereas Malick’s films are more like poems. Plots exist, characters develop, but not in traditional ways or at the pace of most films. Malick takes his time and his films are best viewed by letting the experience wash over you like a wave rather than trying to remain objectively outside the movie. The Tree of Life is Malick at his most concentrated. You will be engaged deeply, but suspend the demands for immediate comprehension. See it with others because the film will reward great conversation afterward.

True Grit is an extremely watchable film and incredibly funny. I found myself laughing throughout the movie at the pinpoint dialogue and brilliant characterization of the world’s inhabitants. Damon’s gregarious and cocky LaBouef is so tonally correct I wondered why it took so long for the Coens to put him in one of their movies. The film is textured and surprising, which marks a true accomplishment since the quest is one of the oldest motifs in literature. Brolin does not portray Chaney as some monster, but more like a dangerous child who has never felt appreciated. Bridges embodies every inch of Cogburn’s body. You can nearly smell the booze on his breath. The real surprise of the film, however comes from Steinfeld, who handles the smart and complex dialogue with incredible ease. There are accomplished and well-paid actors and actresses two or three times her age who would sound incredibly dumb trying to deliver these lines. Every character, from the leads, to each supporting role is three-dimensional to such a degree I was reminded of the Coens’ mid-1990’s masterpieces Fargo and The Big Lebowski. In those films each role, including those with only a few seconds’ screen time, were wonderfully quirky without being caricatures. The inhabitants of True Grit are similarly well-developed. It is an exceptional film.

True Grit, for all its technical skill — the Coens’ script, the acting, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography are superb — offers a powerful picture of a world where life holds little value. Early in the film, Mattie stands in a crowd and watches the hangings of convicted criminals. The snaps of the nooses momentarily shocks the witnesses, but they quickly return to their business. People in the film are killed quickly, violently, and with little reflection. Mattie, who narrates the film as an older woman, reflects that the only thing that is free in the world is God’s grace — everything else comes with a price. When we meet Cogburn, we see that he has lost an eye earlier in his life. Along the journey, LaBoef and Mattie are both permanently injured. The film’s world is, in the words of theologian Miroslav Volf, “stripped of grace.” Mattie may say that grace is the only free thing in the world, but we never see it extended to anyone. Furthermore, whether justice is ever restored is a question hanging over the film, though to its credit, the film does not ask this question explicitly. True Grit creates a world where all debts are collected and nothing is forgiven.

The Coen brothers have been some of my favorite filmmakers ever since I saw Fargo. Their films have played with the tensions of fate versus chance, good versus evil, and violence versus peace. More recently, however, their films have addressed blatantly theological questions. A Serious Man retold the biblical story of Job with a thematic faithfulness to the text that should make any believer of the Judeo-Christian God uncomfortable. True Grit explores questions of grace, justice, and vengeance. We as an audience embrace and enjoy Mattie early. We cheer for her. Her doggedness in achieving her goal of seeking the death of her father’s murderer wins us over to her side quickly. Because she never questions her sense of right and wrong and we accept her worldview, it is not until after the film is over that we begin to question this sharp-tongued, shrewd, and brilliant young woman. She may have the perseverance of Odysseus, but her quest is to kill Chaney. Whether that happens out in the wilderness by a bullet or in a town at the end of a rope, makes no difference to her. All that matters is that Chaney pays for her father’s death with his life. Only upon reflection do we begin to see that her determination may be a thirst for blood cloaked in a sense of justice.

I try not to give weight to awards all that much these days given that it seems they are given based more on advertizing and politics than on merit — also, I have qualms with pitting such different pieces of art against one another. All that said, I agree with the attention that Steinfeld has received for her work. She was nominated for several supporting actress awards. This makes me wonder, what constitutes a lead role? Mattie is easily the main character of the story. She is in nearly every scene. She creates and drives the action. She changes more than any other character in the film. She has more dialogue than any other role. How is that not a lead role? If there are to be awards and contests for acting, Steinfeld should have been nominated for best actress in a lead role.

The similarities between the novels are found in more than their near-universal acclaim, however. Both books deal with the breakdown of the American dream and family, though taking a look at the phenomenon from different angles and time periods. American Pastoral is narrated by Roth’s alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman, who tells the story of Seymour “the Swede” Levov through the early 1940′s to the end of the 20th century, focusing primarily on the 1960′s. Levov is a Jewish-American former high school all-star athlete from Zuckerman’s hometown of Newark, New Jersey. He is tall, handsome, intelligent, and energetic. Levov inherits his father’s glove-making factory, marries a former Miss New Jersey, and embodies the American dream as held by many immigrants. Zuckerman’s fictionalized account of Levov’s life also includes a catastrophic dismantling of that dream. The Corrections follows the Lamberts mostly through the 1990′s, though with some flashbacks for context. The Lamberts are a Midwestern Protestant family in which the value of hard work is paramount. Each of three children — Gary, Chip, and Denise — eventually emigrate from the geographical and cultural locale of their childhoods and stake new lives in the Northeast. Every member of the Lamberts achieves some level of success in their family-lives or careers and suffer frustrating defeats in the same arenas. Both novels show the futility in seeking ultimate meaning from the guiding American myth.

Despite the near-universal acclaim for both works, they left me dissatisfied and I’ve spent months wondering why exactly that is. Make no mistake, Roth and Franzen can write. Roth’s prose, with its nearly page-long sentences, delves thoroughly into the psyche of the Swede. The narrative weaves in between events decades fluidly in ways that are surprisingly successful. Franzen similarly mines his characters’ thoughts and emotions to levels that few authors can achieve without losing sense of direction. I appreciated Franzen’s dark humor more on the second reading. The chapter following the eldest son, Gary, is extremely effective in how Franzen guides us to see everyone conspiring against Gary and slowly realize along with him that he is depressed.

Ultimately, I think that the books are unsatisfying because I do not think they say much new or in new ways. American Pastoral spends most of its time in the 1960′s with its race-riots, counter-culture, and anti-government protests. Has not that period been mined enough in American fiction? Roth adds nothing really new to the conversation. Disillusionment with the self-made mythos expressed itself uniquely in the 1960′s. I think John Updike covered that rather well in his novel Rabbit, Run when he published it in 1960. Distrust of authority emerged in new ways as the youth rebelled against their parents, the government, and the military. Did not films such as The Graduate and MASH address those themes?

Admittedly I have not read much of Roth’s work — The Plot Against America is his only other novel I have read. Many of the reviews of American Pastoral called it Roth’s most compassionate work. If this is Roth expressing compassion, I fear reading him when he is angry or scathing. In the novel, Zuckerman lives as a virtual hermit, spending most of his time writing, and rendered impotent by surgeries to remove prostate cancer. He grew up in awe of the Swede and when he meets him later in life — remarried and with young sons — he finds Levov extremely boring. But when Zuckerman learns at a high school reunion that Levov’s daughter was involved in a bombing and that his life was not as perfect as he tried to let on, Zuckerman undertakes a fictionalized retelling of the Swede’s life. Zuckerman goes to great lengths to detail the downfall of this once universally-admired youth from Newark. By ending the novel with Levov’s marriage in shambles and his only child on the lam, Zuckerman attempts to render the Swede as impotent as he is. The things that the Swede cherishes cannot merely dissolve, they must explode in race riots, extramarital affairs, and bombings. Zuckerman does not even allow one murderous bombing to be enough — he must create three more bombings for the Swede’s daughter Mary to commit. The picture of Levov that readers come away with is one of a sincere, but ultimately naive man, a man who, in Zuckerman’s (or is it Roth’s?) world must have everything taken from him, including his values and beliefs. In the end, we are encouraged to laugh at Levov like his dinner guest in what seems to be a nod to French existentialist literature. But unlike that literature, American Pastoral will not commit to saying that life and humanity’s efforts to improve are absurd. It merely seems to shrug and say, “Check out this idiot.”

Neither American Pastoral nor The Corrections offer another vision of what life is supposed to be like. That is a bit more forgivable in the case of The Corrections since it deals with the 1990′s and it was published in 2001. The 1990′s needed some deconstruction. For American Pastoral to criticize the 1960′s and offer no alternative, to provide no sense of what should have been done otherwise, means it ends with something of a limp thud.

The Corrections ultimately suffers from many of the same problems of American Pastoral. While the narrative gets deep into nearly every aspect of the characters’ lives and minds, it is lacking in empathy. The story remains at a distance and we are invited not so much to see ourselves in these characters’ lives, not to laugh with them, but to laugh at them, to watch them with a sense of superiority that we can see their problems on the horizon before they ever do. We laugh at Chip trying to steal salmon in the grocery store, but mostly because it is so absurd it is hard to imagine ourselves in similar situations. We watch Denise’s competitiveness creep into all areas of her life, including romance, and we see the train derailing well before she ever does, but that inevitability does not make her more empathetic or even tragic. We may know all the details of her life, yet it never feels like we get our hands dirty, it never seems like we are invited to care for her. And in the end, The Corrections has little to say that has not been already said. Are we really shocked to realize that this American myth of hard work leading to monetary success and that money giving us ultimate meaning is false? Are we surprised that the temptation is therefore to numb ourselves with medications — what was once the purview of the local drug dealer is now packaged by big pharma — and that those medications do not solve our deepest problems? Are we caught off guard to learn that the mid-20th Century ideal of the nuclear American family was bound for failure?

For all my dissatisfaction with these novels, they are worth reading for their excellent prose and they are, in my opinion, examples of fascinating exercises in missing the mark — I reread The Corrections because when Time recently put Franzen on its cover and called him a “Great American Novelist,” I was wondering what it was that I missed from his book. I know that my views about both novels are in the minority. I do not mind unlikeable characters, but I think it is necessary for authors to express some empathy for their characters if they expect their readers to connect to them. Richard Russo writes some people who do pretty awful things, and yet we get the sense from his novels that he has true compassion for his characters even if he cannot stand their decisions. Despite liking aspects and large chunks of these novels, I have a hard time being very excited about them because all they seem to offer is critique without any sense of something greater existing.

Though you won’t find it in Webster’s, there’s a word to describe the kind of meticulously constructed writing that bores even its author. A “bore-geous” novel is one that is packed with gorgeous, finely wrought descriptions of places and people, with entire paragraphs extolling the slope of one character’s nose, whole chapters describing another’s perambulations through a city. These novels are often historical or set in foreign lands, their bore-geousness inspired by the author’s anxiety about making an unfamiliar world feel convincing and true. It’s not that the sentences aren’t well-constructed, even lovely. They are. That’s part of the problem. Bore-geousness happens when you are writing beautifully but pointlessly.

Go check it out while it’s still online for free.

Stevens is touring in support of his recent EP All Delighted People and album The Age of Adz, his first full-length album of new songs since 2005′s Illinois. The Age of Adz is a departure from the sounds and lyrical themes he crafted in his abandoned fifty states project, which brought him his fame. Those familiar with his electronica album Enjoy Your Rabbit or the multimedia and orchestral ode to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, The BQE, will recognize the more dissonant sounds and expansive arrangements. Most of the show consisted of the newer material, which Stevens acknowledged might frustrate some of the fans who wanted to hear his older stuff. Stevens reminds me of artists like Bob Dylan, Radiohead, or even Picasso, who change styles dramatically several times throughout their careers. The joy of being a fan is not so much curling up with the familiarity of their work, but the knowledge that with each new outing, one is going to be surprised and challenged.

Stevens did open the show with an older song, “Seven Swans,” but his 9-piece backing band supported him in making the song larger than it was in the original recording. When he broke into the last refrain, “‘Cause he is the Lord,” the dissonance of the arrangement gave a clue to the audience what we were in for: things were breaking apart and the show was going to be an exploration into some fairly dark recesses of Stevens’ imagination. Once the song was over, the banjo went away and we were now going into new territory with The Age of Adz and a few tracks off of All Delighted People.

That Stevens was able to reproduce the expansive sound of The Age of Adz live was an impressive feat. Just to get the sound of the album’s percussion across, Stevens used a drum machine and two drummers on gigantic kits. His musicianship on the guitar, piano, banjo, and in his singing were especially striking. No one is ever going to levy the charge that he plays it safe or that he doesn’t think big. The stage featured musicians playing multiple instruments, backing singers that doubled as dancers, and a screen on which the art of prophet, schizophrenic, and sign painter Royal Robertson was projected. For all its grandiosity, this felt like an extremely intimate show. It was not intimate for the ways Stevens connected with the audience, but that he seemed to be so introspective, so emotionally naked. His t-shirt had a giant human heart on the front and the words, “Be Mine,” written on the back. At one point Stevens went on a long, perhaps overly long, description of Robertson’s life and work and how it inspired him throughout creating the new album. It is telling that he finds artistic camaraderie with a reclusive painter who received religious visions and prophecies and suffered from schizophrenia. One can hear how the pressures resulting from years of praise and high expectations have affected Stevens in his song, “Vesuvius,” which he introduced by likening his work the past several years as scaling a mountain only to realize at the top that one has not summited a peak, but is instead looking into the mouth of a volcano. It’s not a happy image.

While the lyrics of his new work are so raw and personal — Stevens does not hide behind historical or biblical figures or geographic landscapes — he appeared to be having a great time playing music, dancing, and making costume changes. Despite the prevailing sadness in the new songs as many seem to be dealing with relationships falling apart, the show was a lot of fun. I have no idea where he gets the energy to play “Impossible Soul,” which went on for nearly a half an hour and exhausted me just sitting there listening. It is the rare artist who can sing about regret and mistakes (“Boy, we could do much more together / It’s not so impossible”) and get a laugh, partly because he surprises us with Autotune and partly because he was wearing two leis, novelty sunglasses, and some plastic headdress from an Egyptian costume.

Stevens closed his set with “Chicago,” offering the audience a familiar gift after challenging them so much with his new material. His encore was done entirely solo and consisted of older songs as well (“Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois,” “To Be Alone With You,” and “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”). There, in the confluence of the familiar and new, the dissonant and the melodic, the guarded and vulnerable, stood an artist of amazing ability guiding a packed theater through a world entirely of his creating. It was a bizarre evening, but it was also sublime. The best thing to do is not to try to encapsulate the experience, decipher what everything meant, or find the string that ties it all together. The best thing to do is thank the artist and enjoy the paradoxes. Thanks, Sufjan. Great show.

Inception reminded me of films from ten to fifteen years ago in which the nature of reality and truth were constantly being questioned and played with — films like The Usual Suspects, Dark City, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Fight Club, or Nolan’s own film Memento. I love those movies and welcome their return.

Jason was right that revealing the ending in this review would not ruin the movie for those yet to see it. (Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it, but I will describe a bit of the plot here and my recommendation is if you have not seen the movie, skip this paragraph.) That’s not to say that the ending is some kind of narrative non sequitur, but that the brilliance of Inception has more to do with how it gets where it is going rather than where it goes. Although, where it goes is actually quite brilliant too. Briefly sketched, Inception takes place in a world like our own except that some have discovered ways of extracting peoples’ thoughts by infiltrating their dreams. This leads to a lucrative industry of corporate espionage and counter-espionage. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, in a terrific performance) and his team is one of the best extracting outfits on the planet. When one of his extracting jobs goes wrong, the target of that job, Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers Cobb the opportunity to return with an expunged record to America where he is wanted for a crime in exchange for the infiltration of one of Saito’s greatest competitors. Instead of extraction of information, however, Saito desires inception, the planting of a single thought in the mind of the heir of the company Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) that will ultimately damage Fischer’s company and help Saito’s place in the market. Cobb takes the job and assembles a team. I’ll leave the plot discussion at that.

Pay attention to the choices Nolan makes in Inception. He quickly fulfills the first demand of a science-fiction story, namely, to create a world where the things in the story can happen. But by playing with dreaming, something that we all do, Nolan takes a great risk because anyone in the audience could say something along the lines of, “My dreams aren’t like that.” (Most science-fiction stories play with things like space travel, which few humans have ever done, so we don’t have that much in our lives to compare with what is happening on the screen.) Nolan deftly creates enough connection between the real world of our dreaming and what happens in the film through small but brilliant descriptions or visuals. For example, our dreams always seem to start in the middle and when we recount them, it is hard to remember how we got to the restaurant, the apartment, or in the car barreling toward the cliff’s edge.

Once Nolan has created that connection, he is able to describe the logic of the film’s world. He does this namely by bringing in a newcomer to the project, Ariadne (Ellen Page). Most other filmmakers would have made Ariadne the main character so that we can see the story through a sympathetic character’s eyes, which would not be a bad choice. It was a successful move in the cases of Neo in The Matrix and John Murdoch in Dark City. Nolan, however chooses to make the main character not someone who is discovering this new world, but rather in Cobb, we follow someone who has lived in that world’s reality for years and has been destroyed by it. Nolan could have simply wowed us with the world he has created instead of bringing us into the narrative at a deeper level through Cobb’s emotional history.

Nolan has proven through his films the ability to clearly play with storylines out of sequential order (e.g., Memento, The Prestige), but by invading the dream-world and dreams within dreams, Nolan now plays with a storyline happening on several planes of consciousness, unconsciousness, and subconsciousness all at once. That he keeps them all straight and relatively coherent is astounding.

After seeing Inception, I knew I wanted to see it again, but I also knew that I needed some space first to think about what I had seen. My brain felt full, which does not happen with most summer blockbuster films. I think I’m getting close to being ready for a second helping. I am excited to continue to watch Inception numerous times over the coming years and to read what people think about it as it leaves much for the audience to ponder and discuss. I’ll probably want to write more commentary on Inception later, but for now, I wanted to express my appreciation and awe at Nolan’s masterful work of art. May he continue making complex, emotionally rich, and visually astounding work for a long time. I hear that filming on the third Batman movie starts in March. Can’t wait.

I first read Russo when I picked up his 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls and was immediately blown away by how true it all rang. Russo has the touch to depict with generous clarity small towns and their layered histories. Inhabitants in Russo’s worlds have decades of history together in which forgiveness can be learned and practiced or grudges can fester. He always treats his characters with depth and fairness and he never talks down to them as if their blue-collar lives are somehow less interesting than those who spend their days in universities or metropolitan settings. Russo reminds us that every human being is capable of an utterly rich emotional life and every place where people live together is full of beauty, tragedy, comedy, and guilt.

Bridge of Sighs, Russo’s 2007 follow-up novel to Empire Falls takes place in the fictional town of Thomaston, in upstate New York. Two of the novel’s main characters, Lou and Sarah Lynch were sweethearts beginning in junior high and married later. The third, Robert Noonan was Lou’s childhood friend who left in junior high after viciously beating the class bully, returned in high school, and eventually left Thomaston once his senior year of high school finished because of a complex web of passion, fury, and fear. Noonan has become a world-renowned painter living in something of a self-imposed exile in Venice, Italy. Lou and Sarah have expanded the small empire of convenience stores and rental properties that his parents owned. Lou and Sarah’s property holdings largely consist of places where Lou lived or which had some importance in his young life, as if he is trying to keep things the way they were, or to hold on to them a little longer so that he can make sense of where he came from. Lou — whose middle initial “C.” earned him the nickname Lucy that he never lived down — narrates the majority of the novel from the perspective of someone trying to remember his history. Whether he is entirely successful in that venture is up to the reader.

There is not much of a plot in Bridge of Sighs, which works for its story. Russo writes such engaging characters, he does not have to supply us with lots of action to keep us reading. Just getting to know these people better is its own reward. Lou narrates his family’s history as it moved from one of the most impoverished neighborhoods to the sturdy middle-class neighborhood of Thomaston. There, his father purchased the corner market, Ikey Lubin’s, much to the dismay of Lou’s mother. Ikey Lubin’s becomes as much of a character as any of the humans in the novel. Class distinctions play a prominent role in the story as do those small changes in public taste that seem inconsequential to most, but have great effect on others, killing entire industries, like the move away from a daily milk delivery in glass bottles to purchasing one’s milk in cardboard containers by driving to the supermarket. There is one device adding tension to the story, however. Sarah and Lou are set to visit Venice, and hopefully Noonan, whom they have not seen since he left Thomaston at the age of eighteen.

After finishing the novel, I felt disoriented. I left my hometown of Sanger for college and I never returned there to live. It has been a choice that brings with it a mixture of relief and guilt. Relief in that I knew from a young age that I would not stay. Leaving felt like a necessary step in my development. I have cherished the life I have led since departing Sanger. I met my wife, made the best friends of my life, found my calling, all outside of Sanger. But there have also been some feelings of guilt. Sometimes I think that my rush to leave was more of an abandonment. I am a terrible long-distance friend and apart from recent connections on Facebook, I haven’t really maintained any relationship with people in Sanger outside of my family. I was in town the weekend of my 10th high school reunion, but did not attend. I was only there because it was the same weekend as my father’s memorial service. I had no intentions of attending the reunion before his death brought me back.

While my experience of growing up in a small town prevents me from ever calling them quaint, I realized during this novel that I had my own false notions about Sanger. For one, I assumed that because I grew up there for eighteen years that I knew and understood the town perfectly. What is more, I believed that I know and understand that town as it is now even though I have not lived there for well over a decade. I assumed that while I have changed in the intervening years, Sanger has remained constant. After reading the last pages of Bridge of Sighs I happened to visit my family who still own the hardware store in Sanger. I took the opportunity to drive through the town, past my schools, through my old neighborhood, and around the places where I would ride my bicycle during the sweltering summers. I had driven through town numerous times, but this time I had my eyes opened. I saw how buildings were torn down and new ones put in place. The landscape was different, though there still aren’t many trees. A new high school was built years ago and the campus where I went to high school is now a junior high. My junior high is now an elementary school. As I drove down one of the main thoroughfares, Academy Avenue, I noticed that nearly every business along a certain stretch was not there when I left town. All those businesses I grew up with have closed and something else has replaced them.

I had to realize that my prejudiced assumptions were wrong and Sanger was not in a state of arrested development. If I were to move back — which is highly unlikely — I would in many ways be moving into a new town, not returning to the same place. After I moved away, the town continued its own life, changing without me. As I drove around my hometown, I saw that when I left and didn’t look back thirteen years ago, Sanger didn’t really care.

So how does a stripped-down orchestral set of songs Gabriel didn’t write translate into a live show? Exquisitely. If there is one way to experience “Scratch My Back,” it is live with the full orchestra and amazing stage show before you. This ain’t Muzak — Gabriel is making something legitimate, following that maxim that good artists copy and great artists steal. Gabriel has stolen the work of other musical acts and has created something uniquely his own, telling a new story through other peoples’ words. This was the second time I’ve seen Gabriel live — the first being the Growing Up Tour of 2003. Gabriel benefits from years of financial success and can afford the latest technology to give a mulit-sensory experience. He puts on performance art pieces, not rock concerts. That is not to say that the music or songs are reduced to some self-serving pretension, but Gabriel uses the visuals with the music to tell a story. One can almost consider his shows concept-concerts. This differs from say, U2, who also use technology to engage the senses at their shows, but usually the visuals are to enhance the songs themselves; the focus there is never taken off the music.

Gabriel, who has been making music for decades does not strike me as the type of artist who would participate in a retrospective, greatest-hits, give-me-the-applause-one-last-time-as-I-phone-it-in type of show that some artists who have been around as long as he has seem content to do. Instead, he always seems to push himself, whether it is creating a dissonant version “In Your Eyes” as he did on the Growing Up Tour, or taking a new direction and holding off on his strengths of rhythm in favor of strings, brass, and woodwinds.

The evening began with Gabriel introducing the opening act, singer-songwriter Ane Brun, who performed two songs on her acoustic guitar. She sounded fine, but the intimate nature of both her show and the lyrics of her songs did not fit well with the mammoth venue. Brun would return during Gabriel’s set to be one of his key back-up singers along with his daughter Melanie. The New Blood Tour’s stage was fairly simple: Gabriel and two back-up singers at microphones up front, the orchestra sitting behind them, a large horizontal video screen that moved up and down between the singers and the orchestra, and three vertical video screens behind all the players. Gabriel split the nearly 3-hour show into two sections: first the entire Scratch My Back album played straight without any interlude and following an intermission, a set of Gabriel’s own solo work reinterpreted and rearranged for the orchestra.

Gabriel’s version of “Heroes” had me in tears by the end of the song. His richly raspy and powerful voice found the ache in the lyrics that evoked in my mind the image of the song’s two Cold War lovers defying odds — and the Berlin Wall — perhaps more than any other rendition I have heard. Another hauntingly beautiful and rich arrangement came in his cover of Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is a Cage,” a song that could sit well on Gabriel’s album Up, with its tortured rumination on life and impending death. This was followed wonderfully by the cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “The Book of Love,” an occasionally silly and yet pitch-perfect description of romantic love. But as I said above, this was not just a night of music. Gabriel is a true multimedia artist and the images on the video screens perfectly accompanied the soundscape. They mostly showed dots and lines of light flowing together and apart, following either the melody or the lyrics. Sometimes there were animated bits such as in “The Book of Love.”

After the intermission, Gabriel played new arrangements from his catalogue. One of the joys of a musician like Gabriel is that you aren’t entirely sure what he will roll out. Some standards did show up, but others did not, e.g., “Sledgehammer” or “Secret World.” His versions of “Solsbury Hill” and “Mercy Street” stood out and benefited from the larger sound the orchestra provided. Oddly enough, the songs from Us — my favorite album of his — were the most disappointing, though I hesitate to call anything from the show disappointing. “Digging In the Dirt” could have used more rhythm and “Washing of the Water,” rearranged to be a duet with his daughter, was less than successful as Melanie Gabriel had difficulty with her pitch on that song. The songs from Up (“Signal to Noise” and “Darkness”) seemed to need the least amount of rearranging and the orchestra displayed their more operatic structures. For the encore, Gabriel brought out “In Your Eyes,” which may have been the richest version of the song I have ever heard. It seems to be one of the songs that he is nearly contractually obligated to play at each show, but I thought before the encore that I would not be disappointed if he did not sing it. Now, however, I am so glad that he did. I wish I could get that version on my iPod.

Everything in the New Blood Tour worked so well together: the orchestra, Gabriel’s amazing vocals, the visuals. It is hard for me to remember the last time I have experienced something so beautiful. I may have to pick up the concert DVD when it is finally released.