By David Gushee
It’s 2011, and the real problems of our real world will impinge soon enough. But for this one column I want to linger over four great movies that I experienced in the waning days of 2010 — True Grit, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, and Black Swan. Undoubtedly each of these will be up for Academy Awards for their sheer artistic excellence. I want to comment on the way each of these narratives offers an account of moral virtue.
True Grit is certainly the only movie in living memory that starts with a biblical quotation and has a musical score drawn from old Baptist hymns like “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” This Western of fierce retribution and family honor is indeed one of the most explicitly religious major films in a long time. (If you leave out the Left Behind movies, or anything with Kirk Cameron in it.)
But this is a religiosity of law and retribution, of wrath and justice. This is eye-for-eye religion; it’s about the price in blood and sweat and risk one is obligated to pay to avenge the unjust death of a loved one. True Grit teaches the virtues of, well, true grit, courage and toughness and unflinching justice. And yet the score hits grace notes in the margins, perhaps a reminder that frontier religion mixed justice in the street with grace in the sanctuary, a paradigm that is still with us.
Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. (Paramount)
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Like True Grit, The Fighter also teaches such virtues as toughness and physical courage, as pretty much every boxing movie does as it takes a down-and-out long shot and leads him to his bloody, unexpected victories. But The Fighter is also about the clash between family loyalty and personal autonomy, and about the liberation that comes to a man when he becomes able to break free of his dysfunctional tribe. And yet, in a fascinating twist, liberation from family ties is not the end of the story. Mark Wahlberg’s character finds both liberation and reintegration into his family. This movie also offers one of the most unforgettable depictions of the ravages of drug addiction ever seen on film. Christian Bale will surely carry away many awards this spring.
Who would have thought that a very British film about a royal (in top hat, in the 1930s!) with a stammer could possibly be a crowd-pleasing hit? But The King’s Speech is an extraordinary movie that had our very full local theatre riveted from beginning to end. If The Fighter takes the audience into the human drama to be found among the working poor of New England, The King’s Speech offers an equally compelling human drama among one of the world’s elite families.
Helena Bonham Carter (as Queen Elizabeth) and Colin Firth (as King George VI) in The King’s Speech. (Weinstein Co.)
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Colin Firth’s depiction of a bullied, overwhelmed prince entirely lacking in self-confidence and unable to loose his tongue for a 3-minute speech is amazing to behold. And Geoffrey Rush’s depiction of an Aussie speech instructor who refuses to allow rank and class to block the true friendship required for the prince’s healing is just as compelling. This is a movie that teaches the virtues of persistence and resilience, and the power of loving friendship to heal childhood wounds. It also gives us just a glimpse into the virtues that were, thank God, to be found among the British people as the Nazi war machine initiated World War II.
Black Swan is a movie, I suggest, about a certain set of virtues associated with excellence in ballet and many other physical arts; virtues such as dedication to craft, physical self-discipline, and unrelenting drive. But Black Swan reminds us of a lesson taught as long ago as Aristotle — that virtue involves finding the appropriate mean between extremes of deficiency or excess. Sure-Oscar-nominee Natalie Portman’s portrayal of a fragile young dancer’s descent into madness reveals the price to be paid when the unrelenting pursuit of the highest level of performance overwhelms the emotional resources of the striver. Of course, it doesn’t help when one has a scary-weird stage mother who tucks you in at night and fills your room with stuffed animals.
We are a storytelling species, and we have always used our stories to teach one another how we should live, and how we should not. These four films are great examples of modern storytelling at its best. Go see them.