MY MOVIE SHELF: Saved!

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 206  Days to go: 144

Movie #232:  Saved!

This is a delicate subject, because while I’m not a Christian, I certainly don’t make a habit of lambasting people’s religion in a public forum. There are many things about religion — all religions — that I disagree with, but honestly I’m more of an intellectual debate kind of person than a blind insult kind of person. I do love the movie Saved!, though.

Saved! is definitely a film that aims to skewer Christianity, but not broadly. Saved!‘s target, specifically, is extremist Christianity, fundamentalist — dare I say intolerant — Christianity. And this is a problem everywhere, in every religion, around the world. Everywhere there are Christians — many making up huge chunks of my own beloved family and friends — who are reasonable, rational, loving, generous people who are never on the news spreading hate speech in the name of Jesus or whatever. The same goes for Hindus and Muslims and Jews and Buddhists and every other faith system under the sun. They are kind, accepting people, just trying to live their best lives, and I respect that. But there are other people who maybe do not present the most positive image of their faith, and in Saved!, that person is Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore).

Hilary Faye is nothing more than a Mean Girl in Christian clothing. She’s rude, judgmental, superficial, cares only for herself, and she’s incredibly clique-oriented. She’s even awful to her disabled brother Roland (Macaulay Culkin). Only the cool kids can hang with Hilary Faye, or, if you don’t hang with her, you must be a loser. It’s a very angry, very lonely way to be. Jena Malone plays Mary, Hilary’s best friend, who tries really hard to be a good Christian, though she finds it harder and harder as her senior year goes on. What I love is that as Mary has a crisis of faith and, according to all around her, would be considered a sinner (as she starts to hang out with the other “sinners” at her Christian high school), Mary exhibits more positive traits of Christianity than almost anyone else, save Patrick (Patrick Fugit), the pastor’s son who has a crush on Mary. She’s open and accepting of people who her classmates shun (particularly the wild heathen Cassandra, played by Eva Amurri), she’s not at all hateful of her ex-boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust) who’s been sent away to be cured of his homosexuality, and she’s loving and forgiving of those around her, wishing nobody harm. Not even Hilary Faye.

That’s the key for me, I think. I think if you accept that you’re not perfect — that nobody’s perfect — then you’re much more open to accepting the people around you, faults and all. If you hold yourself to an impossible ideal, on the other hand, you wind up nothing but frustrated with yourself and with everyone else. In the end, Mary finds herself reconciled with her faith — not as Hilary Faye thinks it should be, but with accepting the teachings of Jesus as she knows them and with really striving to live her life as he would. And that’s not a joke at all. It may not be my choice, but it’s certainly one I appreciate.

“So everything that doesn’t fit into some stupid idea of what you think God wants you just try to hide or fix or get rid of? It’s just all too much to live up to. No one fits in one hundred percent of the time. Not even you.”

The movie’s also really sweet and funny, and really wry and funny. When Mary prays for cancer, it’s hilarious on the one hand and cringe-inducing on the other. When her mom (Mary-Louise Parker) realizes she won’t send Mary away because she loves her daughter more than anything (even more than she loves Pastor Skip, played by Martin Donovan), it’s incredibly heartwarming. And it hits just about every other point in between, too. After all, “there’s only one reason Christian girls come down to the Planned Parenthood.” “She’s planting a pipe bomb?” “Okay, two reasons.”

“Why would God make us all different if he wanted us to be the same?”

MY MOVIE SHELF: Almost Famous

The long and the short of it is, I own well over 300 movies on DVD and Blu-ray (I’ll know for sure how many at the end of this project). Until June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #12:  Almost Famous

I have a theory that someone could base an entire masters thesis on the use of music cues in Cameron Crowe films. Having been not only a music aficionado but a professional music journalist at 15, he knows better than any other director the exact right song to evoke the exact right emotion or make the exact right statement at the exact right time. Pick any Cameron Crowe movie and one of the most iconic scenes therein will feature such a song — Say Anything… with “In Your Eyes,” Jerry Maguire with “Free Fallin’,” and Almost Famous with “Tiny Dancer,” are perhaps the top three. He uses these songs very deliberately, with specific intent. Each one meant to convey something vital and meaningful to each film. With Almost Famous, the song is a tension breaker after an especially volatile night of infighting and defection within Stillwater, the band our hero William Miller (Patrick Fugit) is there to interview, but it’s not only that. It speaks to the power of music, to the ability of a song to bring people together, of the community one feels among people who share your love for something. When William stops singing along to tell Penny (Kate Hudson) he has to go home, she tells him what we’re all feeling: “You are home.”

That this movie is autobiographical — Crowe himself spent three weeks at age 16 covering The Allman Brothers Band for a Rolling Stone cover story — almost makes it more fantastical and harder to believe, while still giving it additional heft as a story, particularly with regard to William’s mother Elaine, played with a perfect balance of anxiety and love by Frances McDormand. While both she and Hudson were nominated for Oscars in the Best Supporting Actress category for the film, McDormand’s fussy portrayal of Elaine tended to be overshadowed by the bright shining light of Hudson’s Penny Lane, which is a shame. Despite being at times unreasonable and often out of touch, Elaine is actually the solid center of an otherwise chaotic space. She gives William the strong footing he needs to succeed in this maniacal business, and without her influence hovering both over and inside him throughout his journey, he easily could’ve gotten lost.

This, of course, does not diminish the strength and influence Penny Lane also has over William, over the band, and over all the events of the film. She is worldly beyond reason, often seeming much older and more experienced than she has any reason to be. She guides William, literally and spiritually, through the process of touring with a band and of loving — really loving, in your soul — their music. She’s all about the music. But she’s also all about Russell (Billy Crudup, looking preternaturally beautiful), and that’s really where her age betrays her. Because while she is wise, she is also young and vulnerable and in love with a man she can’t keep. The range in Kate Hudson’s eyes, from the tight shot that cuts from hers to William’s as he’s about to be “deflowered” by the other girls, to the little-girl-lost pain in her tears when she asks why Russell doesn’t love her, to the dawning recall of the memory of the things William said and did when she was overdosing on quaaludes, is really a thing of beauty — especially the deflowering scene, as she realizes the stark longing William has that she join them, that the only one he wants to be with is her, and with only her eyes in frame her expression goes from playful to knowing to just a sliver of sadness. It gets me every time.

Then there’s William’s mentor, Lester Bangs, played by the late and brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman, who says as much in his pauses as he does in his dialogue. Although Lester was a real person, here I like to think of him as a mouthpiece for Crowe — not Crowe as he was at 16, because that’s Patrick Fugit’s job, but Crowe as an adult, giving advice to his former self, as we all wish we could do at times, to be true to himself, to the music, and to the story, and to not be a slave to “the industry of cool.”

“Music, you know, true music — not just rock ‘n roll — it chooses you.”

“You wanna  be a true friend to them? Be honest, and unmerciful.”

“I’m always home. I’m uncool!” I can relate. If only I’d known it was okay to be uncool when I was 15.