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After Death (2023)
Fantastic doc
I'm not really a documentary guy, I'm a narrative filmmaker. This is one of the most fascinating docs I have ever seen. Step Into Liquid was my original favorite doc. After Death might be the best.
What this movie does is try to capture all the experiences that people see and hear after they die. A lot of medical testimony from doctors, and most of the interview subjects (people who die) are highly educated people: doctors, professors, airline pilot, etc. And none of these people seemed crazy to me.
Plato mentions a similar event in his famous book, Republic. Paul talks about it happening to him in the book of Acts in the Bible.
Everybody's experience is unique and different. People's hearts stop beating. In some cases their brain waves stop, and they are in extreme cold. They have out-of-body experiences. Some are heavenly (a light) and some are hellish (it's dark). The filmmakers do an amazing job of helping us visualize what these people saw.
If you're looking for "proof" for life after death, this movie won't prove anything. But is there any evidence for it? Yes, there is, and that's documented as well. You might want to keep an open mind and check this out. It's very thought-provoking. By the studio that did The Chosen.
Hogan's Heroes (1965)
Mocking the Nazis
A lot of great artists have tried to use humor against the Nazis: Chaplin, Lubitsch, Wilder. If you want to see mockery, though, real mockery and scorn, you really can't beat this TV show. Even more than Wilder's original film, Stalag 17, this show ridicules Nazis without mercy. It's a subversive and light sitcom about a bunch of POWs who operate as spies behind enemy lines.
The show manages to capture the dark side of Nazis, specifically the SS. Periodically they come in and threaten to send Col. Klink to the eastern front. Meanwhile, Sgt. Schultz knows the prisoners are up to something, but to acknowledge it would open up a huge can of worms. "I see nothing!" Klink and Schultz are caught between a rock and a hard place, between the evil SS and those damn sneaky POWs. Klink begs Hogan to cooperate and be nice. Meanwhile, instead of escaping to safety--which they could do anytime they wanted to--the POWs sacrifice their own liberty to stay in the prison camp and spy on the Germans.
Hogan's Heroes is broad to be sure. Many of us underrate it. It's not particularly funny or dramatic, but it is enjoyable in the way many TV shows are, and you can easily lose yourself in an episode. What makes it worthy of our time, I think, is that it captures perfectly the mindset we should have about Nazis. Nazis are stupid, stupid, stupid. Over and over the show relishes an attack on the intelligence of Nazis. Oh, you stupid morons, look what we are doing right under your noses. No way are you going to win this war.
You see a lot of Nazis in art. They are our default bad guy, even today, 65 years after the war. But you would be hard-pressed to find any more withering scorn for Nazis than in any random episode of Hogan's Heroes. It is perhaps one of the finest examples of pure mockery in art.
I think much of our pleasure from this show is on that simple basis. "Let's outsmart the Nazis." And yet if you think about it, Col. Klink is a fascinating creation. He's a weak man, a coward, and stupid. But he is not actually evil in the way of the SS. Klink and Schultz are not Nazis so much as nihilists, people who just want to get along in life. "I see nothing!" It's a metaphor for a type of person who wants to avoid conflict at all costs. The repression in that line fascinates. It is, perhaps, an oblique reminder of the German refusal to see what was happening to the Jews. Klink and Schultz avoid seeing what the POWs are so obviously up to, for the same reason they avoid seeing what the Nazis are up to: to see such things would cause problems for them personally. So Klink chooses, on some level, to be a buffoon, and Schultz loves his strudel. They are likable and yet in a certain way reprehensible. It is the humanity of Klink and Schultz-- their weakness, their fear, their basic decency--that makes this show so interesting. We watch as they bounce back and forth between the evil of Nazi Germany and the heroism of the POWs.
While the show undoubtedly works on the cheap level of adolescent thrills--watch as we upstage authority and mock the Nazis--the show also works on a more complicated level of subversion and repression and masks. The POWs often corrupt Schultz with strudel, and then he refuses to see what he has in fact seen. The POWs go further, on occasion saving Klink from the Nazis so as to keep him as commandant. The conceit is that no Nazi can possibly be as dumb, or as complicit, as Klink. Klink in turn defends his own perfect record, how no one has ever escaped from his prison camp. Which is true enough, but only because it is headquarters of a massive spy ring.
The show works on both simple and complex levels. Nazis are mocked without mercy. And yet too the show is all about masks and self-deceit and repression and subterfuge and denial. Much of this swirls around the character of Col. Klink, the buffoon with a monocle and a riding crop. He is unable to be good and unable to be evil. He is too weak to please the Nazis and too weak to stand up to them. He is not a Nazi so much as a facade of a Nazi. His whole camp is a facade. And yet he wants to be liked by the Nazis and liked by Hogan. He wants everyone to like him and he wants all problems to disappear. It is Klink's desire to avoid all conflicts and problems and disharmony--his desire to keep his beautiful facade up at all costs--that makes Hogan's Heroes unusual and fascinating. While it is a simple, even a simple-minded sitcom, it is also one of the more layered comedies you will ever see. In fact that's exactly what it is, since half the show takes place in an underground tunnel.
I remember when I was a kid and I first heard of "the French underground." I figured they were actually under the ground, like the guys in Hogan's Heroes. Good guys in secret tunnels under bad guys is a wonderful and comic visual, a manifestation of id against ego, of rebels against tyranny and oppression. It's silly, yes, but kinda brilliant too.
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
A Fight With God
Speaking as a Christian, I just want to say this movie rocks. It's amazing. Yes, Ridley Scott took some liberties with Biblical text. The staff of Moses was turned into a sword. But he captured the heart and soul of the story! Moses was a fighter. He fought with God and struggled to follow God's will. He fought with the people he was trying to lead. And he fought with the authorities.
We like the staff because it's symbolic of Moses as a shepherd leading his flock. But the reality of it was that this was a very hard struggle, and the sword symbolizes that struggle. And throwing the sword into the sea symbolizes how Moses has stopped fighting with God, and he has surrendered his will. Exodus captures this struggle, this fight, in beautiful fashion.
The ultra-realism of the movie reminds me of The Passion of the Christ. But I'm also reminded of The Passion of Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc, like Moses, has been called by God to do something incredibly difficult. Moses has to lead all the Jewish slaves out of Egypt. Joan of Arc has to drive the English out of France. And these artists who are representing these struggles on the big screen are inspired. They want to share these stories with us.
I thought the acting was magnificent. The way the actors held it in, like men trying to be tough? I love the minimal dialog. And I felt the pain of Ramses at the loss of his son.
I want to thank the financiers, who spent $140 million bringing this story to the big screen. To spend that much money, on a Biblical epic, in this day and age? God bless you. It made me cry, this film. It touched me. I am very appreciative of this beautiful work of art.
Notorious (1946)
Hitch's Darkest and Most Powerful Work
Cary Grant is the most amazing actor in the 20th century. You know that comic genius in His Girl Friday? Hey, it's the same guy. What a dark performance from a master comedian. Here Grant is so contained, so cold, so wary of women. This movie is James Bond for grown-ups. He's a good guy, but he's also a bad guy. What makes this movie so amazing is that Claude Rains, the Nazi, is nicer to Ingrid Berman than Cary Grant is. Way nicer. He's a better man. For most of the movie Cary Grant is like the Nazi mom. He and she are both wary of emotions and love and how vulnerable your heart can make you. And love makes you vulnerable. It's true. Nazi mom is going to die because she loves her son, and her son is going to die because he fell in love with Ingrid Bergman.
Notorious is a movie about the dangers of love and sex. It's dangerous to be vulnerable and open, like Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. When you're a nice, open person, you can end up a whore, or murdered by Nazis for sexual indiscretions. Repress! Close yourself off from your own emotions, like Cary Grant or Nazi mom do. Be mean and controlling and strong. And then you find out that you're cold and evil. This is a movie about restraining your passion, hiding it away. You need to do this if you want power and authority, but you lose your humanity when you do this. You become an ideological tool and a bad person. What a great film. What an amazing artist Hitch was.
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Sex is Making Me Insane!
One problem in appreciating a comedy like this is you have to approach it with the right mindset. 20 years ago, I would have insisted that Animal House is a much funnier movie. But once you understand the conventions of the 1930's and 40's--particularly how people dealt with issues of sex (specifically, how they repressed their sexual desires)--the screwball comedies of that era are hysterical. Repression screws you up, man. That's why they're screwballs. To get the humor requires a level of maturity and knowledge that most teenagers simply don't possess. Sexual repression is something adults do. Kids are like, "hey, want to see my ass?" Animal House is like your crazy id battling against the superego of Dean Wormer. Bringing Up Baby is the exact same conflict, except it's all bottled up in the character of Cary Grant. This woman is driving him crazy. She's stalking him, she's ruining his career and his wedding. She's trashing his life. And he's so polite and chivalrous about the whole thing. And his id is screaming, "let me out! let me out! I want to strangle her or have sex with her or both, anything, I'm going crazy all bottled up in here." So Grant is starting to stutter. This battle, this little war between his id and his repression of his basest desires, this is what makes Bringing Up Baby the epitome of the screwball, and a brilliant film. When I was young I didn't laugh at this. Now it puts me in stitches. It's funnier every time I watch it. Hawks is a genius.
The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)
Idiot savant
Bill Murray has made a lot of brilliant art, from Caddyshack to Rushmore to Lost in Translation. This, I think, is his funniest work. He plays an idiot savant who is fearless, who plays games of life and death because he thinks it's a game. What makes this whole movie seem like a high-wire act is whether Murray will discover that his life really is in danger. If he makes this discovery, his confidence will be shattered and he will fall to pieces. It's a hysterical and brilliant riff on male confidence and male delusion. It's an ode to the power of innocence. He is oblivious to all the bad in the world. He's unaware of his own vulnerability. Compare the sweaty James Bond to the cool and nonchalant Bill Murray. It's like zen for morons. It's hysterical when you watch it and brilliant when you think about it.
Taylor Carmichael
Way... Way Out (1966)
Release the DVD!
Jerry Lewis movie, I swear I love this thing. It's better than The Nutty Professor. The Commies have a man and woman on the moon. So the Americans send up Jerry Lewis and Connie Stevens, the first married astronauts. It's an arranged marriage, they barely know each other. So the movie has this sweet vibe as these two married strangers start to fall in love. And there's some moon shenanigans. The Russians invade the space station, and Jerry swallows all the vodka pills. I haven't seen this movie in twenty years--it's not out on DVD, a crime--but I have fond memories. It's a happy flick. And the title song is an inspired bit of 60's pop music.