3 posts tagged “film”
The Jammed is an Australian movie that ventures deep into the world of people trafficking. Based partly in Melbourne but mostly in Sydney's notorious 'Kings Cross' district, the film follows the fortunes of three prostitutes - two Chinese and one Russian - who have each been trafficked into the sex trade. Without being gratuitous or voyeuristic, The Jammed takes a close and detailed look at the lives of these girls, and traces the path by which family poverty and debt lead to exploitation and violence. The film is very Australian, but hits the bullseye in its portrayal of people trafficking and as such travels well into the European scene. Trafficking is a global industry and like MacDonalds and Starbucks, it tends to follow pretty much the same rules wherever it shows up.
The Jammed is not a comfortable film to watch. I remember a year ago watching Dennis Quaid in 'Savior' - a story of the Bosnian and Croatian wars inpired by eye-witness accounts - and feeling the same as I felt last week about The Jammed. These movies are graphic, disturbing and difficult to watch, but they are also very truthful, and as such an important part of our lives. There is a climactic scene in 'Savior' that still disturbs my memories - not because it is a 'Nightmare on Elm Street' fearfest, but because it records an event that probably happened, and if it didn't is so close to events that did that it might as well have: and it happened to people not a thousands miles from my front doorstep; people I am privileged to spend time with every now and then. Film-making is not just about escapism. Sometimes it is about showing us precisely the things we are trying to escape from. I recommend both movies very highly.
Mr Bean joined us for the services at Crossroads this week - not in person, of course, but on film. Rowan Atkinson has said that the latest movie - Mr Bean's Holiday - will be the characfter's last outing. At 52, the actor says he is too old to deliver the stamina and flexibility that this kind of physical comedy demands.
It may be significant then, that the film presents a real change in the character of Mr Bean. Atkinson has said that the key to understanding Bean is his selfishness. “The Essence of Mr Bean" he said recently,"is that he’s entirely selfish and self-centered. He doesn’t actually acknowledge the outside world.” There is a perfect picture of this in the movie, when Bean is lost on the wrong side of Paris. Noting on a map where he should be and confirming the direction, he heads off across town in a perfectly straight line, oblivious to all those around him. Traffic, people, buildings - none of these are even present in Bean's consciousness as he pursues his single-minded goal of getting to where he needs to be.
Sound like anyone you know?
But there is also, in the film, the beginnings of a very different Bean. Stuck looking after a Russian boy who has been seperated from his father, the otherwise selfish Mr Bean forms an unlikely freindship and begins to come out of himself, eventually re-uniting the boy with his family. Not quiet a Damascus-road conversion: Mr Bean to Mother Theresa in one short step, but a change nonetheless. And our last memory of Bean - if this is indeed his final stand - will be of a man who discovered in the end, through caring for another, the glimmer of sefless love. "Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his compass and notice those around him....".
This is the traler for the film Babel. We used a sequence from the film this morning at Crossroads to illuminate the question 'Who is my Neighbour?'. The surface link is that the film, like the question, explores the connectedness of human beings. How closely connected am I, really, to a child in Africa or Mexico? In the global village, are we really all now neighbours?
If you watch the whole movie you may notice an even stronger link with the question 'Who is my neighbour?'. In the New Testament, Jesus responds to this question by telling a story - of a man on a journey, who falls prey to criminals and is left wounded and helpless, dependant on the mercy (or otherwise) of strangers. Sound familar? Babel tells the story of an American couple on a journey; victims of an accidental crime. Left stranded in Morrocco cut off from help, they must look to the mercy of strangers for their healing and rescue. And more than that, the film traces three other stories - the two Morroccan boys who cause the accident by playing with a high-calibre rifle; the father and daughter of a Japanese family from whom the rifle came, and the children of the American couple left in the charge of their Mexican nanny: victims of a misunderstanding at the US-Mexico border and subsequently lost in the desert. The boys; the Japanese daughter; the Mexican nanny: each must plead their case to strangers - in every case figures of authority. In each case the 'victim' is either saved or lost by the way those strangers respond. Will there be judgement, or compassion? Will they be heard or refused?
Beautifully filmed and hauntingly scored, Babel is a roller-coaster of concerns and emotions. But it may also be the best dramatisation of the story of the Good Samartian since the day Jesus first told it. If you want to be understood, listen.
