Thursday, October 1, 2009

Human goodness is not enough

Josh Hurst at Christianity Today offers an appreciation of two of my favorite film makers in "The Coen Brothers' World."
In the cinematic universe of award-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen, morality matters. Good and evil are usually depicted clearly as such; there are rarely shades of gray. Sometimes their camera lingers long on depravity, but they don't neglect the wages of sin, either; wrongdoers reap the consequences of their choices. ....

.... Some might argue that the Coens' world is amoral, but a discerning look reveals morality aplenty. Good and evil stand apart from one another as clearly as black and white—or red and white, in the case of their classic crime story, Fargo. Set against the endless snow of the frigid Midwest, it's a movie about greed, about a perfect crime gone horribly awry—in short, about the wake of destruction left by one man's evil ambitions, seen starkly as a crimson trail of blood against the pure white terrain.

Fargo's heart and soul is local sheriff Marge Gunderson, played in an Oscar-winning turn by Frances McDormand. She's chipper, pleasant, and very pregnant. She's deeply affectionate and supportive of her husband, Norm. Their tranquil life contrasts the frenzied greed of the bad guys as much as a drop of blood on the snow. At the end of the movie, she wonders how anyone could be so selfish: "And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day," she sighs while driving the crook to prison. Hers is a heart of gratitude and virtue; she couldn't be more different from the reckless criminals she's spent the whole movie pursuing. ....

Where do these sharply contrasting ideals of right and wrong come from? On what basis do the Coens define virtue and nobility? Christians see goodness as a reflection of who God is, but in many of their films, the Coens, who are Jewish, don't offer a theology to speak of. Crucially, however, they don't exclude the possibility, either.

I don't know that Joel and Ethan Coen have answered the question yet; they may not have the answer. But they at least understand the question. ....

.... Characters consider the role of fate, grasping for meaning in a world of chaos and suffering. The Coens don't necessarily point us to Christ, but they don't have to; they show us that human goodness is not enough, that our own devices are frail and feeble in the face of unstoppable evil. As Christians, we can fill in the rest of the story. [more]
The Coen Brothers' World | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

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