Malick and Scorsese on confession and martyrdom

The two people to read on Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) are Jon Baskin (in NYRB) and Alan Jacobs (in The Point as well as his blog). One thing I assume others have noted but that struck me in my viewing is the likeness to and contrast with Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016).

Both directors are 1970s auteurs. Both are Americans born during World War II. Both are Roman Catholic in one sense or another. Both have made multiple films featuring explicitly Christian themes. In fact, within the next year or two, both will have directed films about Jesus of Nazareth himself.

Moreover, both A Hidden Life and Silence are rooted in historical events, though the latter is an adaptation of a novel fictionalizing something that happened centuries prior, while the former is an imaginative evocation of a real man’s life and martyrdom, based on his personal correspondence. As it happens, the execution of Franz Jägerstätter occurred less than four months before Malick’s birth.

Finally, both films are about faith under conditions of persecution, the meaning (or meaninglessness) of suffering, the command of Christ under duress, and martyrdom. Scorsese and Malick come to very different conclusions, however.

To be sure, neither film imposes a particular interpretation on the viewer. Personally, I read Silence against what are Scorsese’s evident intentions: namely, to vindicate Rodrigues’s ultimate decision to step on the fumie, i.e., to repudiate and blaspheme the image and name of Christ. He does so, under impossible pressure, not only from Japanese authorities, who are torturing Japanese Christians before his very eyes, but also from Ferreira, a fellow priest who preceded Rodrigues’s time in Japan. Ferreira wants Rodrigues to see that nothing is gained by not giving in. He is the voice of “reason” absolving Rodrigues in advance of his betrayal. At last Rodrigues does the deed. In a long epilogue, we see him going about his life aiding the Japanese in keeping Christianity out of the country. But when he dies and is given a customary burial, his wife slips a crucifix into his hands—on which Scorsese zooms in the final image of the film.

Again, Scorsese is clear: he wants us to approve of Rodrigues, who saved the lives of believers under his care, relieving their suffering, while keeping the faith quietly, privately, silently. Here Scorsese is wrong both in his theological instincts and in his artistic instincts—he need not try to stack the deck so obviously—yet the film remains patient of other readings, including readings wholly contrary to Scorsese’s own intentions.

Now consider A Hidden Life. Over and over, Franz is asked a variety of the same question: “What are you wanting to accomplish? Your death will do nothing. It will make no difference. No one will even know of it. The only result will be the suffering and shame brought upon your widow, your orphaned daughters, your mother, and your village.” Franz’s calculus, however, is not consequentialist. It’s a matter of principle. He cannot do what he believes to be wrong, even if it will make no difference whatsoever. (And it’s worth noting that basically no one knew his story for decades after his death.)

In a pivotal scene late in the film, Franz’s wife Fani visits him in prison. As they face each other across a table, his lawyer gives him one last chance: if he signs a piece of paper, the execution will be stayed, and he will be permitted to work in a hospital—he won’t even have to fight as a soldier. The only price is the oath of loyalty to Hitler.

With the paper before him, Franz’s parish priest joins Fani at the table and makes the following appeal (this is a quote, not a paraphrase):

God doesn’t care what you say, only what’s in your heart. Say the oaths and think what you like.

This is precisely Ferreira’s advice to Rodrigues. And here it is likewise a Catholic priest meaning well. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you repudiate Christ; it doesn’t matter if you deny his lordship and pledge yourself instead to Der Führer. What matters is your heart. Think, feel, believe what you like—quietly, privately, silently—so long as you step on the image; so long as you swear the oath.

Franz refuses. And he never sees his wife again. Soon thereafter he is taken to the guillotine. He is killed “for no reason,” “senselessly,” by his own stubborn refusal to do the “sensible” thing, for the sake of others—his own beloved family. The Nazis kill him in a windowless room away from witnesses or crowds. He dies alone. For what?

The film as a whole is the answer. The rationale underlying it, though, highlights the contrast with Scorsese. Who you are is not separate from what you say and do. “You” are not “within.” “You” are your words and actions—full stop. The distinction between the inner self and external behavior is not a division, much less a chasm separating the real from the ephemeral. As Christ promises: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”

Confession manifests the self. There is no you except the you who acts in the world. The life and death of Franz Jägerstätter—beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007—reveals this truth, and Malick understands it. Based on the evidence of Silence, Scorsese does not.

Pseudo-Scorsese

It’s come to my attention that there are discrepancies in the filmography of American director Martin Scorsese. To be precise, certain films attributed to him evidently qualify as pseudirectoria (pseudokinemagraphia? pseudeikonzon?)—that is, instances of unnamed others claiming his name as director of a cinematic artifact, although the evidence suggests otherwise.

Consider three films, released across more than two decades’ time: The Age of Innocence (1993), Kundun (1997), and Silence (2016). Their subject matter, respectively: a historical romantic drama set in the 1870s among the upper class; the life of the Dalai Lama, set in Tibet in the middle of the twentieth century; and the plight of Catholic converts and their missionary priests in seventeenth century Japan.

Are we really supposed to believe that the director responsible for these films is the same man behind the camera—during the same time span!—for Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)? Not to mention Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and Raging Bull (1980)? It beggars belief.

The visual grammar; the composition and editing; the characters, time periods, settings, and cultures; the dialogue; the feel—it’s all off. Someone else has been posing as Martin Scorsese in plain sight. Any honest comparison between the two groups of films will render the same result; any protest to the contrary is clearly a matter of special pleading.

The upshot: We have a Pseudo-Scorsese on our hands. The time has come to weigh the evidence and thence to sort the “official” or “received” Scorsese oeuvre into those films that are “authentic” or “undisputed” and those that are “inauthentic” or “disputed.” Historical and artistic integrity demands no less.

Two thoughts on Adam Nayman on A Clockwork Orange

You should be reading the film criticism of Adam Nayman. Last week he wrote at The Ringer about Stanley Kubrick's adaption of A Clockwork Orange "in the age of cancellation," i.e., in a time when works of art deemed "problematic" are censored, edited, or banned. Or at least when such a fate is wished upon them by screaming hordes online.

I have two thoughts in response to his piece on ACO, which as usual is an excellent, thoughtful engagement with a difficult and culturally influential film.

First, toward the end of the essay he writes the following:

"It’s hard to say what’s more boring: The idea that a good movie is one made by a good person and/or contains content that could be considered progressive for its time and place, or the shouting-down of that position from those whose investment in rejecting it can seem condescending or creepy."

This is a genuinely strange dichotomy to pose, and there is only one plausible source for it: Twitter, or social media more generally. Surely Nayman knows there are—no joke—real-life, actual arguments, in print, in reputable journals and magazines, going back decades (and more), about the reception of art whose content or creator is morally questionable? Whereas the first item in his dichotomy is a culturally powerful, and growing, one, the second item he opposes to it is limited to a minuscule chorus of internet trolls who represent nothing and no one. Framing it in the way that he does, however, presents a faux false choice between two apparently equally bad options. Yet the falseness of the false choice is in the set-up, not in the actual positions available on the issue.

So either Nayman really thinks these are the options before us, or he is taking the easy way out and presenting a fake dilemma he knows is built on straw. Or, I suppose—what's best for him and worst for us—he, like so many who write about film and the arts today, spends too much online. Twitter distorts the mind, y'all. Get off it.

Second, he concludes the essay with the following paragraph:

"A Clockwork Orange is worth defending and decrying, although it’s not like coming down one way or the other is going to have much effect on a movie that’s already been elevated into the canon, and whose influence—from countless dorm rooms and laptop desktops adorned with posters and screenshots—is already massive. In truth, we don’t need another essay on A Clockwork Orange. But I do think we need the movie itself, not just because its problematic aspects are so bound up in its power, but because of what it says about the psychology of cancellation itself, and the unnaturalness of censorship and the comforting lie of 'bad apples,' which reassures us that it is other people who are rotten to the core. To paraphrase Kael, we become clockwork oranges if we reject difficult art without asking what’s inside us first. And it’s better to watch A Clockwork Orange than to be one."

This is a brilliant ending, and a point I largely endorse, since it's implicitly Augustinian: original sin means that, under fallen conditions, every artist and every work of art is implicated in evil—there's no way out. Which need not lead to either license or excuse or flattening of complicity in evil; but at a minimum it makes the correct diagnosis and eliminates the vacuous hope of "pure" art.

A minor addendum, however, from this unrecovered moralist: in point of fact, we don't "need" A Clockwork Orange, and for most of us, it would be better not to watch it at all. ACO and films like it—that is, works of visual art that depict or engage in gratuitous sex, violence, or vulgarity in such a way as to indict the viewer's own imlication or pleasure in them—fall prey to Truffaut's critique of anti-war films: the medium undermines the message. All anti-war films ultimately end up glorifying war; mutatis mutandis, the same goes for films that attempt to critique decadence by enacting it. Martin Scorsese is postmodernism's guilty auteur de jour here: Goodfellas, Casino, and The Wolf of Wall Street fail at exactly this point.

Which isn't to render a quick and easy No against these movies, or to argue that no one should see them, or to suggest that they don't have subtle things to say worth attending to in critical essays like the one Nayman's just written. Only to say that, all things being equal, A Clockwork Orange might do more harm than good, either in one's own life or in the broader culture; and that can be true at the same time that everything approbative Nayman says about the film is true, too.

Art's complicated. Cliché though it is, nevertheless it's one more reason, among many others, to resist cancellation culture, however "problematic" the work in question.

C. S. Lewis on the fumie

Meanwhile, in the Objective Room, something like a crisis had developed between Mark and Professor Frost. As soon as they arrived there Mark saw that the table had been drawn back. On the floor lay a large crucifix, almost life size, a work of art in the Spanish tradition, ghastly and realistic. “We have half an hour to pursue our exercises,” said Frost looking at his watch. Then he instructed Mark to trample on it and insult it in other ways.

Now whereas Jane had abandoned Christianity in early childhood, along with her belief in fairies and Santa Claus, Mark had never believed in it at all. At this moment, therefore, it crossed his mind for the very first time that there might conceivably be something in it. Frost who was watching him carefully knew perfectly well that this might be the result of the present experiment. He knew it for the very good reason that his own training by the Macrobes had, at one point, suggested the same odd idea to himself. But he had no choice. Whether he wished it or not this sort of thing was part of the initiation.

“But, look here," said Mark.

“What is it?" said Frost. “Pray be quick. We have only a limited time at our disposal.”

“This,” said Mark, pointing with an undefined reluctance to the horrible white figure on the cross. “This is all surely a pure superstition.”

“Well?”

“Well, if so, what is there objective about stamping on the face? Isn’t is just as subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean—damn it all—if it’s only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?”

“That is superficial. If you had been brought up in a non-Christian society, you would not be asked to do this. Of course, it is a superstition; but it is that particular superstition which has pressed upon our society for a great many centuries. It can be experimentally shown that is still forms a dominant system in the subconscious of many individuals whose conscious thought appears to be wholly liberated. An explicit action in the reverse direction is therefore a necessary step towards complete objectivity. It is not a question for a priori discussion. We find it in practice that it cannot be dispensed with.”

Mark himself was surprised at the emotions he was undergoing. He did not regard the image with anything at all like a religious feeling. Most emphatically it did not belong to that idea of the Straight or Normal or Wholesome which had, for the last few days, been his support against what he now knew of the innermost circle at Belbury. The horrible vigour of its realism was, indeed, in its own way as remote from that Idea as anything else in the room. That was one source of his reluctance. To insult even a carved image of such agony seemed an abominable act. But it was not the only source. With the introduction of this Christian symbol the whole situation had somehow altered. The thing was becoming incalculable. His simple antithesis of the Normal and the Diseased had obviously failed to take something into account. Why was the Crucifix there? Why were more than half of the poison-pictures religious? He had the sense of new parties to the conflict—potential allies and enemies which he had not suspected before. “If I take a step in any direction,” he thought, “I may step over a precipice.” A donkey like determination to plant hoofs and stay still at all costs arose in his mind.

“Pray make haste,” said Frost.

The quiet urgency of the voice, and the fact that he had so often obeyed it before, almost conquered him. He was on the verge of obeying, and getting the whole silly business over, when the defenselessness of the figure deterred him. the feeling was a very illogical one. Not because its hands were nailed and helpless, but because they were only made of wood and therefore even more helpless, because the thing, for all its realism, was inanimate and could not in any way hit back, he paused. The unretaliating face of a doll—one of Myrtle’s dolls—which he had pulled to pieces in boyhood had affected him in the same way and the memory, even now, was tender to the touch.

“What are you waiting for, Mr. Studdock?” said Frost.

Mark was well aware of the rising danger. Obviously, if he disobeyed, his last chance of getting out of Belbury alive might be gone. Even of getting out of this room. The smothering sensation once again attacked him. He was himself, he felt, as helpless as the wooden Christ. As he thought this, he found himself looking at the crucifix in a new way—neither as a piece of wood nor a monument of superstition but as a bit of history. Christianity was nonsense, but one did not doubt that the man had lived and had been executed thus by the Belbury of those days. And that, as he suddenly saw, explained why this image,though not itself an image of the Straight or Normal, was yet in opposition to the crooked Belbury. It was a picture of what happened when the Straight met the Crooked, a picture of what the Crooked did to the Straight—what it would do to him if he remained straight. It was, in a more emphatic sense than he had yet understood, a cross.

“Do you intend to go on with the training or not?” said Frost. His eye was on the time. . . .

“Do you not hear what I am saying?” he asked Mark again.

Mark made no reply. He was thinking, and thinking hard because he knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the decision out of his hands. Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom he trusted had forsaken him—had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. They had been a safeguard . . . they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making as he turned to Frost and said,

“It’s all bloody nonsense, and I’m damned if I do any such thing.”

When he said this he had no idea what might happen next.

—C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, pp. 334-337