In Heaven, There Is No Corn



Easy enough to see why the 2007 movie Tortilla Heaven did not get much publicity. On one hand, it was not really a bad movie but on the other, it was not very memorable. The whole plot took place in a small New Mexican town full of eccentric characters -- though, ironically, the most eccentric of them was a transplanted English nudist (played by Olivia Hussey) -- that turned out to be the same town where a miraculous tortilla was discovered. The tortilla created a controversy that in turn attracted tourists and then next thing you know, the Devil himself showed up. No, seriously.

In light of the recent scandals involving the Catholic church, it seemed downright nostalgic to see a movie in which the local priest's worst sin was a rather childlike fascination with religious statues. But apart from that, there was not a whole lot about this movie I can recommend. On one hand, I did find it refreshing to see so many law-abiding Latino characters in one movie; on the other hand, well, I did mention that the Devil himself was played by a Latino, right?

The Invention of Lying and the Myth of America

I once rented the 2009 movie The Invention of Lying from the local library, and one of the first things that came to my mind while I was watching it was the notion that this imaginary world where the movie is set -- a locale where no one can say anything but the harshest and bluntest of truths -- was supposed to be a fictional version of America. Or at least a fictional version of America as it must have seemed to English actor/writer Ricky Gervais when he first came over to this country from his homeland.

After all, Americans tend to take pride in being more honest than the English, more direct than the English and less likely to shade the truth with diplomatic white lies than the English.

So while the latter half of the film can be seen as a religious satire, the original inspiration might have been the temptation to poke fun at us "straight-talking" Yanks in such a way that most of us wouldn't catch on.

Of course, if you don't like that theory, I have others... but I like this one best.

As for the religious aspect of the movie, I found the premise of the movie to be a lot kinder and sympathetic toward religious people than I expected even though I found its idea of religion being just another form of lying to be more than a bit questionable.

Then again, the most questionable part of the movie was the part that expected me to believe that a woman who looked like Jennifer Garner could ever fall in love with a guy who looked like Ricky Gervais. After all, Gervais is not exactly famous for playing likable characters in his native England, let alone romantic heartthrobs. And though his character in this movie is a lot more sympathetic than, say, the character he played in the UK version of The Office, the romance between his character and Garner's still seemed less than convincing.

Then again, when I look upon some of the more unlikely real-life relationships I have witnessed since this movie was first released, it seems more and more believable. Or at least as believable as one might expect from a movie about lying.

What a Revelation!

If nothing else, the 1991 movie The Rapture deserves credit for being the one of the few films critical of Fundamentalist Christianity that dares to ask the question: if such a religion is so bad, why are so many people attracted to it?

It promptly gives at least one answer in the opening sequence in which we view Sharon (played by Mimi Rogers) doing a customer service job that requires her to mechanically give the same information over and over again to different customers. In other words, Sharon works in a dehumanizing environment.

Every so often, Sharon goes off with Vic, a male friend, to blow off some steam by picking up strangers for casual sex. But even this doesn't satisfy her.

Then one day Sharon witnesses a group of people in the company cafeteria who appear to have a special bond. She soon finds out that they are in a special church and she finds herself being drawn to them more and more even though she doesn't consider herself a religious person.

Sharon hears talk of a mysterious black pearl but she is not allowed to join the group until she has seen the pearl herself. Soon afterwards, she goes into a near-suicidal depression and just when she is at the darkest part of her dark night of the soul, she sees a pearl.

She joins the group soon afterwards and becomes so enthusiastic about it that she converts her latest boyfriend, Randy (played by Fox Mulder himself, David Duchovny), into the group as well and eventually marries him.

For a while, life goes better for her. Her husband gets a better job. She quits her job to become a stay-at-home mom. She leads her family in daily prayer sessions. In short, religion seems to work for her.

Then one day a disgruntled office worker kills Randy in a tragic scene which unfortunately includes some of the worst acting in the movie. (For what it's worth, Duchovny is quite adequate but the actor who plays the homicidal maniac is just awful.) Sharon is heartbroken and eventually turns her back on her church when none of the religious people prove up to the task of consoling her.

Instead, Sharon becomes obsessed with seeking her own means of salvation by going off into the desert to make a Kate Bushian deal with God. Unfortunately, it is never quite clear whether such a deal actually exists or whether Sharon merely imagines one in her mind. Ultimately, she makes the Supreme Being an offer she thinks he can't refuse -- only to find...

Ah. But that would be telling. But surely it's not much of a spoiler to note that the movie does not exactly end on a happy note.

It says something about how well The Rapture works -- apart from the one scene I mentioned above -- that both religious people and confirmed atheists can draw lessons from it. Indeed, despite a quite literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations toward the end, the movie remains quite ambiguous as to who actually is to blame for Sharon's final situation. If you're an atheist, you wish to believe it was God. But if so, why weren't all the pearl-worshippers out there in the desert imitating Sharon? If you're a religious person, you wish to believe that it was Sharon. But you can't help but wonder whether it was a cruel joke for Sharon to find more senseless cruelty pursuing what she believes to be the path of religious virtue than she ever did pursuing the path of secular vice. Either way, the answer to Sharon's dilemma is up to the individual viewer. And, of course, the most obvious lesson of the movie is not to go out and do likewise.

Shaking the Veil

One of the oldest tropes in the book is that of the former sinner who becomes a saint -- or at least, that of the former troublemaker who mends his or her ways and becomes a more respectable person. Such is the trope used by the writers of the 1966 movie The Trouble with Angels, a comedy which would have you believe that adorable little Disney actress Hayley Mills was born to play both a rebellious Catholic girl and a future nun.

Unfortunately, Ms. Mills is not all that believable as rebellious Catholic girl Mary Clancy and though it is quite adorable to see her repeatedly lure her schoolmate Rachel Devery (played by June Harding) into one mess after another, I got the feeling that the film's writers just didn't have the heart to make a movie in which Ms. Mills was too rebellious. It doesn't help that most of Ms. Mills' misdeeds seem hilariously tame by today's standards; granted, Ms. Clancy's habit of smoking cigarettes will still get a girl in trouble with her teachers today even in public schools. But compared to the attitudes which would become common in future generations, Mary Clancy seems like an altar girl and the harshest sin we ever see her actually commit occurs in the opening credits sequence in which Clancy's animated self blows out the flame of the Columbia Studios torch. More often, Ms. Clancy's worst sin is trying to seem a lot more sophisticated than she actually is and she is hardly the first or last teenager to commit that misdeed.

Fortunately, there is Rosalind Russell as the strict but ultimately kind-hearted Mother Superior to give an antidote to whatever saccharine taste Ms. Mills gives the movie. Ms. Russell was hardly the first actress I would have picked to convincingly play a Catholic nun but she plays the role well enough that I can't help but think that if most real-life nuns in the 1960s were nothing like Ms. Russell's character, they should have been.

There is also a cameo by former stripper Gypsy Rose Lee whose role in this movie never quite makes sense as anything but either an in-joke reference to Ms. Russell's performance in Gypsy or else an excuse to allude to Ms. Lee's former career within the opening credits.

As a devout Catholic, I must admit that I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I actually did. After all, this was one of the last Hollywood movies to depict the nuns of the pre-Vatican II era in a sympathetic fashion and while I realize there is a darker side to recent church history than Hollywood movies of the Hays Code era liked to admit, I also doubt that such a system could have endured for so long if there was not at least some good in the system as well. However, this film just did not work for me as well as it should have.

Oh, well. Like Mary Clancy, I too was once a bit of a rebel against the Church even though I never went to Catholic school, and yet even back then, there was a part of me who could not resist the lure of holy water and stained glass. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

Perhaps. I'm still a long way from qualifying for a halo but at least I haven't been hit by lightning yet so maybe my guardian angel was trying to tell me something.

I Don't Know How to Say This

I actually celebrated Mother's Day this past weekend by accompanying my mother and my youngest brother to a local fish restaurant, after which we went to a local theatre to see the new release Soul Surfer. And even though Soul Surfer was billed as a “Christian” movie made primarily for the appreciation of “Christian” movie-goers and even though I have a tendency to cringe whenever the makers of a certain form of entertainment go out of their way to emphasize that it's a “Christian” movie or a “Christian” TV show or a “Christian” record and not just a form of entertainment which has Christians in it -- I actually ended up liking the movie.

That's right. Despite all its religious messages and Biblical allusions and mentions of a certain Christian savior, I actually liked Soul Surfer. And this despite the fact that I am a mere heathen Catholic who is supposedly too hip to like “Christian” movies.

Perhaps it was because of the acting chops of Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid, who play the parents of the title character, a young girl who was maimed by a shark and then forced to learn how to relive almost half her life with only one arm. Or perhaps it was because I could not help identifying with the title character. Or perhaps I relished the irony of a movie which saw no reason why surfer culture and traditional Christian culture should not be part of the same lifestyle, which was not the type of thing one would have expected from conservative Christians four or five decades ago.

No matter. The movie was enjoyable in its own way and while I would not necessarily go out of my way to see it again, I can hardly pretend that it was one of the worst cinematic experiences I have had this year.

It would be nice to blame the success of the movie on the number of scenes involving bikini-clad teenagers but I've seen Hollywood movies that have bared far more skin and still managed to be boring. Indeed, one of the most surprising things about this movie is that it appeared to have more in common with traditional Hollywood sports movies like Ice Castles and Gracie than it did with the average religious movie. And it did not hurt that many of the values it promoted (perseverance, fair play, willingness to help others) seemed suspiciously like the ideas liberal movies used to promote.

I really do not see this movie converting many viewers who were not already Christian to begin with. But I liked it anyway.

And I like to think that the fact that I was able to walk outside afterwards and not worry about getting hit by a lightning bolt says something good. If not, I am sure I will soon find out.