Summary: Most modern films are either shallow like puddles, socialist realism (PC, stealth re-education of the audience by politically more advanced Hollywood), or comic books. Occasionally, a film comes along that challenges our comfortable view of the world. Critics recoil in horror. Audiences tend to avoid them, unless they are superbly executed. They are worth watching for those willing to think outside the lines. Like this one. It’s on Netflix and at Amazon Video.
Constantine
Starring Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, and Shia LaBeouf.
John Constantine: “What if I told you that God and the devil made a wager, a kind of standing bet for the souls of all mankind?”
Angela Dodson (detective): “I’d tell you to stay on your meds.”
Constantine: “Humor me. No direct contact with humans. That would be the rule. Just influence. See who would win.”
Dodson: “Okay, I’m humoring you. Why?”
Constantine: “Who knows. Maybe just for the fun of it. No telling. …”
Dodson: “This has been real educational, but I don’t believe in the devil.”
Constantine: “You should. He believes in you.”
A capsule review by Belinda at IMDB.
Constantine is a dark, yet dazzling film. A terrific story backed up by spectacular special effects and great cinematography pull us into a dark and dangerous world – a world where half-angels and half-demons whisper to us mortals as God and Satan use us as pawns in an apocalyptic game of chess. Cursed with ability too see these spirits, John Constantine finds himself right in the middle of this showdown.
“Keanu Reeves gives a fantastic turn as John Constantine. He infuses Constantine with a grim sense of purpose and dark humor. He is the ultimate anti-hero, and Reeves deftly takes Constantine from being someone we simply root for to someone we actually like and respect.
“Rachel Weisz is terrific as well. Her tortured and soulful performance is the best of the film. Shia LaBeouf also blew me away.”
Now for the really interesting reasons to watch it.
Why fight for good, or justice – rather than just for that which benefits you? Is there such a thing as good? The good are always outnumbered, which implies that God does not care that evils rules on the Earth. An omnipotent God could surely arrange things otherwise.
The best explanation I have found is that God has more important concerns, does not care about us, and leaves a subsidiary immortal — the demiurge – to rule the World. This is Gnosticism, logical but too dark to become popular.
In Constantine, we see a more modern explanation: a hybrid of Christianity and Existential philosophy). There is no meaning beyond that which we create ourselves. We are playthings of forces beyond our control or even understanding. The world is not only unjust and irrational, but absurd.
In Constantine we see this played out. The plot follows few of the usual tropes. The critics, preferring politically sweet and unchallenging stories, recoiled in horror (even most of those that gave it a “fresh” rating did not like it). The plot is simple in outline, but they professed not to understand it (perhaps because it lacks the heavy exposition poured on the audience by modern Hollywood films).
In John Constantine we see a man struggling to cope in a world run by rules incongruent with justice — or the welfare of people on the street. He has little interest in goals of Heaven or Hell, just self-interest — which provides him no clear guidance. Until he sees higher needs, those of humanity — and heeds their call. Although I doubt he could say why. The causes of heroism are often mysterious.
We see an angel — before whom we are bugs, who no more understands God’s plan than we do — adopting “own goals” (much as Nazis “worked towards the Führer” in the absence of his instructions).
The ending is ambiguous, as it is in most great dramas (e.g., what’s the message of Hamlet?). As it has been in many recent films about heroism, such as Drive Angry
These films should provoke us to think more deeply about what we are doing in our lives, what we are doing with America – and what America is doing with (or to) the world. Simple-minded attempts to “do good” will not work in our complex world, especially as we wield powers beyond the imagination of our ancestors. These films feature magic, but our daily lives consist of what would be considered magic to anyone from the past.
Trailer for Constantine
For more information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all film reviews, and especially these about recent films…
- See Solo, a Star Wars film that says much about America.
- Incredibles 2, a Father’s Day gift from Disney.
- Ocean’s 8: the most dangerous film of the year.
- See the secret theme of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
- Ant-Man and .the Wasp: fun for kids, boring for adults.
- MI Fallout is Tom Cruise’s fun cartoon for grown-ups.
For a better perspective on these matters
The invention of hell is one of the West’s greatest intellectual achievements, an attempt to see the world as having some element of justice. It has proven to be quite complex and difficult to explain. Our attempts to do so make the story of Hell the West’s longest story, told and retold and repeatedly refined for thousands of years. Here is the best book yet about this project.
The History of Hell
By Alice K. Turner.
“From the beginning of recorded history people all over the world have believed in an afterlife with two principle destinations, and Hell has inspired more interest than Heaven, especially among painters and poets. This is an illustrated survey of how religious leaders, artists, writers and ordinary people in the West have visualized Hell.” {From the publisher.}
See the review by Jonathan Kirsch in the LAT: excerpt…
“The History of Hell is a fascinating survey of how ‘the Great Below’ has been depicted in arts and letters over 4,000 years of Western civilization. “This investigation is geographical rather than theological or psychological,” insists Turner, who shows us hundreds of color and black-and-white plates that vividly (and sometimes pruriently) depict what hell is supposed to look like.
But the fact is, Turner’s book reveals a sophisticated mastery of theology and psychology as well as art history and comparative religion. Indeed, the book was inspired by Turner’s graduate studies in comparative literature at New York University. Her musings on the varieties of hell range from ancient Babylon and classical Greece, through Virgil, Augustine, Dante, Milton and Goethe, and all the way to James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and Joseph Heller. …
“‘Far from disappearing in the twentieth century,’ she writes, ‘Hell became one of its most important and pervasive metaphors.'”
