Child of God (1973) is Cormac McCarthy’s most disturbing book, and the film is hard to watch. The story is of Lester Ballard (played with an uninhibited intensity by Scott Haze) who, deeply traumatized, marginalized and disturbed descends into increasingly violent depravity. We first meet Lester when an auctioneer, accompanied by a band and pickups full of eager buyers and on-lookers pull up into his family’s farm that has been repossessed by the county and now is to be sold off. “To watch these things issuing from the otherwise mute pastoral morning is a man at the barn door,” McCarthy writes. “He is small, unclean, unshaven. He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A child of God much like yourself perhaps” (p. 4).

            James Franco, who directed the film, co-wrote the screenplay and plays a minor role, makes certain we hear that description of Lester. That is good because it is the essence of what McCarthy is trying to say to a culture that wants so badly to be hopeful about the promise of future technological, economic and educational advances and finds that to maintain that hope it needs to explain away the evil and brutality that maddeningly will not disappear quietly into the past of human history.

            I can’t simply recommend this film, since it is far too raw and brutal for that, a story of murder, rape and necrophilia that like the novel is determined that we face human depravity in all its horror. Some will want to watch this film, and for the rest there are good reasons to decline. Though the film is unfortunately choppy (due to the editing), it contains some very strong performances—by Scott Haze as Lester Ballard and Tim Blake Nelson as the sheriff—that may garner attention if not awards. The landscapes, sets, and cinematography are also remarkable, so that the rough rural woods, small towns and hollows of East Tennessee seem to take on a darkly foreboding cast. As usually occurs when novels and made into films, a key scene in the book is skipped in the movie, a flood that becomes a metaphor for divine judgment.

            Watch the film with care. It speaks truth, though the truth it depicts is neither pleasant nor easy. I hope Child of God prompts my non-Christian neighbors will think deeply about the human dilemma and about how the stubborn existence of evil in human affairs and hearts will not be solved by reorganizing society, expanding opportunity, and providing treatment. A far more radical solution is needed. And I hope my Christian neighbors will join me in reassessing how easily we reduce evil to embarrassing sins rather than owning it as the deadly power that seeks, every moment, to devour our souls and fill us with darkness.

            The fourth reason detective mysteries are appealing as stories is related to the foundational truth that human existence is meaningless apart from community. We do not thrive nor are we fully content as solitary creatures, because as the Creator said in the beginning, it is not good to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Extended solitary confinement can drive a person mad, and even hermits usually build their cells near one another.

            And because we are finite and fallen creatures, as soon as community is established a system of some sort is necessary if justice is to be maintained. It may be a simple system that grows up informally, but something systematic is required if the community is not to descend into some sort of libertarian anarchy. This is the wisdom in Jesus’ instructions to his followers about how to proceed if someone sins against us (Matthew 18:15-20) and when churches fail to take his words seriously the result is rarely admirable.

            And because we live in a broken world, corruption can penetrate our systems, within the church or without, and when it does all of life is disrupted and perverted. Sadly, corruption is a constant threat, from cities where the police accept bribes to look the other way to the incestuous relationship between Washington and Wall Street. Corruption undercuts the pursuit of justice, skewers the hope of victims, and allows the powerful to gain at the expense of the powerless.

            Detective stories bring this complex interrelationship of community, system, justice, and corruption into focus so that as we read life seems to be clarified. We love detectives who are incorruptible, and see them as heroic. We wonder about the detective who takes shortcuts for the greater good, and cheer if their breaking the rules results in the criminal being apprehended. And we feel a weight when the story is of corruption all through the system, so that justice is always thwarted and the forces of law instead make a bargain with the forces of crime to keep the evil within “acceptable” limits. This is why debates about a nation’s judicial system become so heated—even if we are not dragged into the justice system personally it matters to us that the system in our community is not corrupted.

            And so detective stories are appealing because they allow us to live in a fictional world where these realities are explored, for blessing and for curse. We follow the cases of incorruptible detectives and feel hopeful, or the cases of corrupt detectives and wish they would be caught and exposed. Human community, systems of law and order, and the diabolical threat of corruption are constantly with us, and both justice and hope lie in the balance.

Lord Peter & Father Brown

            If you have not read Dorothy Sayers’s (1893-1957) Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries or G. K. Chesterton’s (1874-1936) Father Brown mysteries, please do so. I think it is correct to say that these two Christian authors not only wrote ripping good stories, they revealed how glorious the detective genre could be.

            Lord Peter is a stereotypical British aristocrat, with a trusty butler, and time on his hands because his money, which is considerable, was inherited. So he solves mysteries, and because of his moral commitments and lack of need, is incorruptible in his pursuit of justice. An interesting detail for Christians is that though Lord Peter is not a believer, another character in the stories is, and the interplay between the two is fascinating.

            Father Brown is a Catholic priest, and is a good detective because he cares only for truth and has spent so many hours hearing confession that he has no illusions about human nature. He can see past and through deception and lies, and notices ordinary details that more distracted people all miss. When he confronts the criminal at the end of the story it is not with the standard, “You are under arrest,” but with “I am ready to hear your confession.”

            Both Sayers and Chesterton clearly saw how detective stories fit into the deeper biblical story of reality, and though neither series are religious in the sense of being preachy, both take law, guilt, justice, mercy and forgiveness with the seriousness they deserve. The fact that neither detective is corruptible makes the stories all the more satisfying. I’d like both Lord Peter and Father Brown to be at work in my community.

            Father Brown (51 short stories published in various editions).

            Lord Peter (11 novels plus 6 short story collections published in various editions).

The Protectors

            The Danish national police force includes the P.E.T (Politiets Efterretningstjeneste) division, whose job is similar to that of the U.S. Secret Service, providing protection to politicians, public figures, royalty, and visiting diplomats. The series follows a group of new recruits to the service, so we get a glimpse of the more mundane as well as the exciting parts of the job. The individuals on the squad have personal lives and concerns, and how these interact with their demanding and dangerous work is a subtext woven into the plot.

            In one sense The Protectors is not a detective series, yet fulfilling the tasks assigned to them usually involves needing to anticipate dangers and unravel threats to the persons they must keep safe. Their work carries them to the edge between criminal violence and social justice, and hidden clues and mysterious criminals always lurk. And they are tasked with preventing terrorist attacks, tracking dangerous persons, and finding stalkers.

            One of the delights of The Protectors is the insight it allows into Danish life and society. Filmed in Copenhagen, each episode provides lovely vistas of Danish countryside or the scenic streets, architecture, interiors, and neighborhoods of Copenhagen. Following the members of the squad also allows insight into Danish culture, mores, and daily life.

            I enjoyed this series, appreciated the character development as the episodes progressed through each season, and came to understand how even working as a bodyguard can demand choices that are rife with ethical concerns, and sometimes moral confusion. The Protectors are often misunderstood, criticized when things go badly by powerful figures in politics and the media, and ignored when everything goes well. Yet the squad remains committed to its work, and does its best even when needing to protect unsavory characters. In a fallen world, police like the P.E.T. will always be necessary, and one can only hope that they act with the integrity the officers in The Protectors sought to nurture and display.

            The Protectors (2 seasons, 10 episodes each, 1 hour each episode, Danish with subtitles, available on DVD or streaming)

Spiral

            The Protectors is set in Denmark and follows a squad of limited officers who desire to live with integrity, while Spiral takes us to France where nearly everyone depicted in the series seems willing, if not eager, to be corrupted to get ahead. Spiral is delightful for the opportunity it provides to see into French life, society and culture and the lovely setting of Paris. The corruption comes not because they are French, but because they are fallen, and to mark the contrast, one figure in the series seeks justice even at personal cost.

            The French system of justice is quite different from what I am used to, with magistrates empowered to investigate crimes and determine whether the persons involved should be brought to trial. The series follows one such magistrate and the police working under his direction depicting how he must weave his way through a labyrinth of political vested interests and legal corruption. Two young attorneys, trying to get their careers launched in a crowded and competitive field, discover the temptation to bend the law is not merely present but is usually far more lucrative than just doing the job of a lawyer.

            The depiction of corruption is never glorified, and though characters may claim things are relative, the stories reveal that is not the case. Choices have consequences, justice perverted is never victimless, and the individual who chooses corruption may gain wealth and even prestige but loses their soul.

            Each series of episodes tends to follow one major crime, as it is investigated and brought to justice, with subplots of other smaller cases woven into the plots. Over time we watch as temptation, disappointment, and choices make a difference, setting up ripples that work their way out to poison the system upon which the community depends. This is a rather dark and gritty series, one that shows not just the horror of crime, but the tragedy that is corruption.

            Spiral (5 seasons, 8-12 episodes each, 1 hour each episode, on DVD and some streaming, French with subtitles)

Peaky Blinders

            A production of BBC Two, Peaky Blinders tells the story of a family gang that ruled the streets of Birmingham, England in 1919. World War I has just ended, conditions for working men in Birmingham are grim, Communist agitators are seeking to organize resistance, industrial pollution is unrestricted, and despair and alcoholism are rampant. The Peaky Blinders, a family of gangsters are named for their caps, into the peaks of which they have sewed straight razors, so in a street fight they can be slashed across an opponent’s eyes. The neighborhoods that the gang rules are bereft of law, the police either bought off or too afraid to get involved. Then the brutal but effective Chief Inspector Chester Campbell (played by Sam Neill), is brought in from Belfast by Winston Churchill to clean up the mess, and he soon comes up against the head of the Peaky Blinders, the clever and ambitious gangster Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy).

            In this series we go one step further and watch what life is like when corruption has perverted the system, so that the street gang and the police are more alike than not. Both take life when it suits them (though for different reasons), make compromises to get ahead, and try to find a way to further their own ends even if integrity is lost in the process.

            In some neighborhoods today residents fear a squad of police arriving on their street even more than they do the gangs that rule the street when the police are absent. Peaky Blinders gives some hint of what that must be like, and it is not as it should be. Chief Inspector Campbell is on the side of law and order, yet is willing to brutalize, torture, invade homes, and make the sight of a constable a reason for the law abiding citizen to fear.

            The trajectory from Lord Peter and Father Brown to The Protectors to Spiral to Peaky Blinders follows stories of increasing corruption. None of these productions glorify crime and corruption but force us to face the reality of the tragedy of living in a darkly fallen world. They reveal how badly we yearn for a system within our communities that seeks justice with integrity, which in turn reveals why we mean it when we pray, “Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

            The Peaky Blinders (2 seasons, 6 episodes each, 1 hour each episode available exclusively on Netflix and DVD)

I received an email from Marsh Moyle, a friend who has long been carried by a vision to bring a vision of culture and life shaped by the gospel (www.citygate.org) to the nations that formerly languished under the yoke of Soviet communist rule. “This came today from friends in Ukraine who are quite reliable,” he wrote. “The news is very disturbing. They would appreciate your prayers.” What follows is the content of the email:

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Dear friends,

            Many of you have asked us, what is going in Ukraine and how it affects our ministry. On the second issue I can say that it doesn’t really affects for now and there are no real fights in Kryvyi Rih. But many of our volunteers were in Kiev and many of our friends—both believers and unbelievers participate actively, so we worry about them and try to support as much as possible. Also we try to show our position—based on Gospel, filled with love, justice and hope when the situation looks like hopeless. Many people are absolutely zombified by Russian propaganda and they are really blind and aggressive. Another try «to bury their heads in the sand» and they hope that it never touches them. And the biggest group of people is absolutely lost and disappointed. For us it’s a great chance to show them that “cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.”

            Concerning the whole situation, I’ve found a letter from famous Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych. This is probably the best short description in English. I can subscribe to his appeals in the last paragraph, but for sure the main request is to pray—because only God can provide the way out from this extremely difficult situation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear friends,

            These days I receive from you lots of inquiries requesting to describe the current situation in Kyiv and overall in Ukraine, express my opinion on what is happening, and formulate my vision of at least the nearest future. Since I am simply physically unable to respond separately to each of your publications with an extended analytical essay, I have decided to prepare this brief statement which each of you can use in accordance with your needs. The most important things I must tell you are as follows.

           During the less than four years of its rule, Mr. Yanukovych’s regime has brought the country and the society to the utter limit of tensions. Even worse, it has boxed itself into a no-exit situation where it must hold on to power forever—by any means necessary. Otherwise it would have to face criminal justice in its full severity. The scale of what has been stolen and usurped exceeds all imagination of what human avarice is capable.

            The only answer this regime has been proposing in the face of peaceful protests, now in their third month, is violence, violence that escalates and is “hybrid” in its nature: special forces’ attacks at the Maidan are combined with individual harassment and persecution of opposition activists and ordinary participants in protest actions (surveillance, beatings, torching of cars and houses, storming of residences, searches, arrests, rubber-stamp court proceedings). The keyword here is intimidation. And since it is ineffective, and people are protesting on an increasingly massive scale, the powers-that-be make these repressive actions even harsher.

            The “legal base” for them was created on January 16, when the Members of Parliament fully dependent on the President, in a crude violation of all rules of procedure and voting, indeed of the Constitution itself, in the course of just a couple of minutes (!) with a simple show of hands (!) voted in a whole series of legal changes which effectively introduce dictatorial rule and a state of emergency in the country without formally declaring them. For instance, by writing and disseminating this, I am subject to several new criminal code articles for “defamation,” “inflaming tensions,” etc.

            Briefly put, if these “laws” are recognized, one should conclude: in Ukraine, everything that is not expressly permitted by the powers-that-be is forbidden. And the only thing permitted by those in power is to yield to them.

            Not agreeing to these “laws,” on January 19 the Ukrainian society rose up, yet again, to defend its future.

            Today in television newsreels coming from Kyiv you can see protesters in various kinds of helmets and masks on their faces, sometimes with wooden sticks in their hands. Do not believe that these are “extremists,” “provocateurs,” or “right-wing radicals.” My friends and I also now go out protesting dressed this way. In this sense my wife, my daughter, our friends, and I are also “extremists.” We have no other option: we have to protect our life and health, as well as the life and health of those near and dear to us. Special forces units shoot at us, their snipers kill our friends. The number of protesters killed just on one block in the city’s government quarter is, according to different reports, either 5 or 7. Additionally, dozens of people in Kyiv are missing.

            We cannot halt the protests, for this would mean that we agree to live in a country that has been turned into a lifelong prison. The younger generation of Ukrainians, which grew up and matured in the post-Soviet years, organically rejects all forms of dictatorship. If dictatorship wins, Europe must take into account the prospect of a North Korea at its eastern border and, according to various estimates, between 5 and 10 million refugees. I do not want to frighten you.

            We now have a revolution of the young. Those in power wage their war first and foremost against them. When darkness falls on Kyiv, unidentified groups of “people in civilian clothes” roam the city, hunting for the young people, especially those who wear the symbols of the Maidan or the European Union. They kidnap them, take them out into forests, where they are stripped and tortured in fiercely cold weather. For some strange reason the victims of such actions are overwhelmingly young artists—actors, painters, poets. One feels that some strange “death squadrons” have been released in the country with an assignment to wipe out all that is best in it.

            One more characteristic detail: in Kyiv hospitals the police force entraps the wounded protesters; they are kidnapped and (I repeat, we are talking about wounded persons) taken out for interrogation at undisclosed locations. It has become dangerous to turn to a hospital even for random passersby who were grazed by a shard of a police plastic grenade. The medics only gesture helplessly and release the patients to the so-called “law enforcement.”

            To conclude: in Ukraine full-scale crimes against humanity are now being committed, and it is the present government that is responsible for them. If there are any extremists present in this situation, it is the country’s highest leadership that deserves to be labeled as such.

            And now turning to your two questions which are traditionally the most difficult for me to answer: I don’t know what will happen next, just as I don’t know what you could now do for us. However, you can disseminate, to the extent your contacts and possibilities allow, this appeal. Also, empathize with us. Think about us. We shall overcome all the same, no matter how hard they rage. The Ukrainian people, without exaggeration, now defend the European values of a free and just society with their own blood. I very much hope that you will appreciate this.

Image 1: Map.

Image 2: Yuri Andrukhovych.

Image 3: Protest in Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square (http://rt.com/news/ukraine-protests-court-ban-538/).

I went to see this movie without reading any reviews or seeing much about it in the media except that some people (including director Spike Lee) found it offensive. I didn’t feel unprepared, however, since I need no introduction to Quentin Tarantino’s cinematic aesthetic. His films are not for everyone, but it seems likely he will be remembered as a crucial figure in film history that left his stamp indelibly on the art form. Loving the older films, especially those outside the mainstream of respectability, he is known for brilliant dialogue, surprising humor, graphic, stylized action, and a willingness to play with conventions of chronology, emotion, and morality to the point of offense.

The story line of Django Unchained is simple. A bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz, played with wonderful charm by Christoph Waltz, is looking for three criminals he cannot identify. He rescues a slave, Django, played by Jamie Foxx who knows the men in question. In exchange for Django’s help, Schultz promises to give him his freedom, some cash, and help in rescuing his wife who has been sold to a different plantation owner. The depictions of slavery over which plantation owner Calvin Candie rules, played with inhuman ferocity covered by Southern manners by Leonardo DiCaprio are as horrifying as the scenes of the Klan led by Big Daddy, played by Don Johnson are ridiculous. Django Unchained makes us anti-slavery not with careful reasons why the practice is unethical and evil but by designing scenes that depict cruelty and dehumanization that are rightly, deeply offensive. And Candie’s black butler, Stephen, played by Samuel L. Jackson, makes us nervous—he is a slave so he should be one of the good guys, but he is not. In the end, before a sentimental shot in the moonlight, vengeance is dealt out in unrelenting intensity.

Perhaps the most revealing part of watching Django Unchained for me was not in the movie but in the theater. Tarantino is a powerful writer and director, and the film sweeps us along to the bloodbath at the end. We have already been sickened by the depictions of slavery, wondering how human beings can treat people with such wickedness. We are yearning for justice and for freedom, as Django does, and fear that the effort to rescue his wife, Broomhilda, played by Kerry Washington will fail. So, when Django draws his gun we cheer, as my fellow movie watchers did, without bothering to reflect on whether cheering for vengeance is the same as yearning for justice. The killing is done in Tarantino style, with geysers of blood, so that the rooms of the big house are splattered with it. It is almost as if he is saying no amount of human blood is sufficient to make up for the evil perpetrated by human beings in history.

I agree. Which is one reason why I am a Christian and believe in the cross.

The year is 1993 and war has come to Bosnia. Two soldiers, a Croat and a Serb, find themselves caught in a trench between the opposing front lines. It’s a deadly conflict, and the film takes it seriously as it should yet the story is told with a deliciously biting sense of irony. And when the United Nations peace-keeping troops show up, led by an officer—appropriately named Soft—the irony only makes the pain of the situation that much deeper.

Although No Man’s Land won an Oscar (Best Foreign Film, 2002) I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did. This is a sensitive story, sensitively told and filmed in a way that is plausible, deeply human, and simultaneously comic and tragic.

War is one of the most indelible proofs of the world’s brokenness, a horror that is sadly as old as human history. The wisdom literature of the Hebrews identified human evil not simply as wickedness and rebellion but also as folly—a foolishness so profound, so innate, so invasive that it mistakes darkness for light and imagines being lost in the cosmos as a proud declaration of personal autonomy. “Let a man meet a she-bear robbed of her cubs,” one ancient proverb said, “rather than a fool in his folly.” No Man’s Land successfully navigates a difficult line, revealing the brutality of a modern battlefield as a place where folly reigns supreme. We watch the plot unfold, laughing while being sobered.

Source: Proverbs 17:12