My husband and I are movie freaks. Our earliest dates were to on-campus movies in college. We’ll see all kinds of movies: romance, sci-fi, adventure, documentary, foreign, independent, animated, whatever. Since we live in a small town with limited cinematic offerings, our favorite way to spend a stolen weekend is to go to a city, get a bargain room, and see as many movies as we can. I believe our record for a three-day weekend is eight, which involved having popcorn for dinner. So of course we’ve been looking forward to the new "Batman" movie, both as summer fun and as Heath Ledger’s last finished performance on-screen. A movie reviewer on the radio caught my attention by stating that the long-awaited blockbuster presents such a bleak world view that it is not a bit redemptive. Hey, I thought, that’s our word. We have for several years now evaluated movies we see on a "redemptive" scale. I don’t actually remember how this started, or which one of us started it, but we often talk about the redemptive qualities of a movie or certain characters in it. My husband’s favorite redemptive movie is "The Spitfire Grill", while I am partial to "Dead Man Walking". It is a fascinating lens through which to see movies. While I agree that "Batman" is not a redemptive story for Batman himself, or for the psychopathic Joker so expertly played by Ledger, there is a plenty strong message of redemption during the movie. The good strive to do better, even against hopeless odds. Redemption is best personified in the unlikely bulk of a huge, scarface inmate in an orange jumpsuit, who, suffice it to say, does the right thing. Jesus has many faces. It’s a long movie, with crazy computer enhancements and a lot of unseen gore. But it definitely reads on our redemptive scale. Valerie Schultz
The Redemptive Power of Batman
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which turns 75 this year, was a huge hit by any commercial or critical standard. In 1949, it pulled off an unprecedented trifecta, winning the New York Drama Circle Critics’ Award, the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. So attention must be paid!
In Part II of his exclusive interview with Gerard O’Connell, the rector of the soon-to-be integrated Gregorian University describes his mission to educate seminarians who are ‘open to growth.’
My recent visit to the Holy Land revealed fear and depression but also the grit and resilience of a people to whom the prophets preached and for whom Jesus wept.
The Gregorian’s American-born rector, Mark Lewis, S.J., describes how three Jesuit academic institutes in Rome will be integrated to better serve a changing church.