Pass National Health Care With Public Option Now
Movie Monday
I don't know when I first decided that I wanted to study history nor do I know when I decided that I would only be happy reading primary historical sources. But it has lead to the gathering of quite a wild assortment of books in my house. like The Children of Pride (letters from a large family living during U.S. Civil War times) and Lay My Burden Down (ex-slaves recall slavery and emancipation.) OK, I know there are very good historians out there with secondary source books but you have to understand the shock I got as a child.
I used to watch way too much TV and I used to watch a lot of historical movies. Not The History Channel with its cheesy historical recreations; but movies about history with their pathetic recreations.
I would watch these movies stirred by the heroics and music, and then I would go and check in "what really happened in history" sources. And, damn it!, the movies got it all wrong. Like in Khartoum, Gordon was really more a nut, than a hero (though Queen Victoria was not amused when he died.) Or a current "classic", Beowulf. He never slept with Grendel's mom. OK, I know this is myth, not history, but I think you see the pattern.
For the sake of a good story, movies really don't care if they get history right. The horror! But there are very few things I would go to the mat for. History as accurate as possible is one of them.
So, at a tender age, I was fact-checking the movies. (I must have been a delightful child.) Plus, I've been reading every primary source I can get my hands on, whether on global history or cultural history. And, yes, I do know that primary sources can be propaganda or presented to be such. That's why I'm such a proponent of courses in logic, starting in elementary school. You have to be able to tell the accuracy of what you read - and see.
All this brings me to Doubt. (Pun intended.) I still think it's a must see for Streep's performance (apparently, that was a Brooklyn accent; though my sorry ears hear Boston.) However, to me this movie was only a vehicle for the POV of the author. It was not culturally accurate for 1964 and the Catholic Church.
No young nun would question a priest for putting a shirt in a male student's locker. Sister James says: Why didn't you hand it to him? What? That line doesn't even make sense. He places a shirt in a locker; he waves to the nun; he drinks from the fountain; he walks away. We move from this to pedophilia?
Then there's Meryl Streep's nun. I have no doubt that there was tension between the convent and the rectory in the 1960s. I have no doubt that a strong-willed, conservative Mother Superior would lock horns with the young, Pope John XXIII inspired, priest. But this type of nun also knew the pecking order. She even tells Sister James: You report to me, I report to the Monsignor. She might decide to bring Father Flynn down, however she would not confide so closely in a young nun in order to do this.
So, like the historical movies which so disappointed me, Doubt, in the end, does the same. Adding to its cultural inaccuracies is the fact that the movie is too brisk and brief to flesh out what is a very dramatic conflict. You move from: the opening sermon, the scene of the priest at dinner; the scene of the nuns at dinner, the basketball scene, the classroom inspection scene..... not the actual order but presented more like tableaus to advance the author's theme.
I believe in the end, he (John Patrick Stanley) wants us, all to have doubt. Why was it necessary to re-write history?
I used to watch way too much TV and I used to watch a lot of historical movies. Not The History Channel with its cheesy historical recreations; but movies about history with their pathetic recreations.
I would watch these movies stirred by the heroics and music, and then I would go and check in "what really happened in history" sources. And, damn it!, the movies got it all wrong. Like in Khartoum, Gordon was really more a nut, than a hero (though Queen Victoria was not amused when he died.) Or a current "classic", Beowulf. He never slept with Grendel's mom. OK, I know this is myth, not history, but I think you see the pattern.
For the sake of a good story, movies really don't care if they get history right. The horror! But there are very few things I would go to the mat for. History as accurate as possible is one of them.
So, at a tender age, I was fact-checking the movies. (I must have been a delightful child.) Plus, I've been reading every primary source I can get my hands on, whether on global history or cultural history. And, yes, I do know that primary sources can be propaganda or presented to be such. That's why I'm such a proponent of courses in logic, starting in elementary school. You have to be able to tell the accuracy of what you read - and see.
All this brings me to Doubt. (Pun intended.) I still think it's a must see for Streep's performance (apparently, that was a Brooklyn accent; though my sorry ears hear Boston.) However, to me this movie was only a vehicle for the POV of the author. It was not culturally accurate for 1964 and the Catholic Church.
No young nun would question a priest for putting a shirt in a male student's locker. Sister James says: Why didn't you hand it to him? What? That line doesn't even make sense. He places a shirt in a locker; he waves to the nun; he drinks from the fountain; he walks away. We move from this to pedophilia?
Then there's Meryl Streep's nun. I have no doubt that there was tension between the convent and the rectory in the 1960s. I have no doubt that a strong-willed, conservative Mother Superior would lock horns with the young, Pope John XXIII inspired, priest. But this type of nun also knew the pecking order. She even tells Sister James: You report to me, I report to the Monsignor. She might decide to bring Father Flynn down, however she would not confide so closely in a young nun in order to do this.
So, like the historical movies which so disappointed me, Doubt, in the end, does the same. Adding to its cultural inaccuracies is the fact that the movie is too brisk and brief to flesh out what is a very dramatic conflict. You move from: the opening sermon, the scene of the priest at dinner; the scene of the nuns at dinner, the basketball scene, the classroom inspection scene..... not the actual order but presented more like tableaus to advance the author's theme.
I believe in the end, he (John Patrick Stanley) wants us, all to have doubt. Why was it necessary to re-write history?
No comments:
Post a Comment