The Church of Movies

WARNING: THIS BLOG REVEALS KEY PLOT DETAILS OF GRAVITY (2013) 'I get it, it's nice up here. You could just shut down all the systems, turn down all the lights, just close your eyes and tune out everyone. There's nobody up here that can hurt you. It's safe.' Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) in Gravity (2013) I have always been drawn to space (even though it's a party with no atmosphere) and that's one of the reasons why Gravity was among my favourite films of 2013. The movie is at one level a silly sci-fi thriller with an excellent 3-D gimmick (it's the first instance of 3-D really enhancing rather than detracting from the viewing experience that I have seen). But there's something else going on as well. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is an astronaut who has gone through great loss and trauma in life and in the course of the film there are moments when she values the complete isolation that space offers. There's no air, it's min...

On the weekend I saw Broken Circle Breakdown I was also leading services at Chester and Warrington in which I spoke on the importance of taking religious belief seriously (see my Confessions of a New Unitarian blog for more on this). In Broken Circle Breakdown Johan Heldenberg plays a man who in his regular daytime life is utterly dismissive and even contemptuous of religious belief but at night he's a singer and musician in a Belgian bluegrass band, passionately performing a repertoire that includes many revivalist gospel tunes such as Will the Circle be Unbroken and Over in the Gloryland . Both of these, incidentally, are songs that really move me, and which I can sing with gusto even though I am theologically / intellectually far removed from them. Heldenberg's character, (Didier Bontinck offstage and Monroe onstage) lives in a noticably compartmentalised world. When he is singing the world is full of beauty, possibility and hope but the rest of the time his wor...