For your enjoyment ...

 

 

 

Films often pick up the zeitgeist of the times, and the Oscars were interesting this year because they tapped into the concerns of many Americans. Michael Clayton exposed the treacherous underbelly of corporate greed, while No Country For Old Men showed good men and women unable to stop the relentless march of a psychopathic monster of their own making. Similarly, There Will Be Blood was a brilliant portrait of a man who mysteriously and without explanation sets out to destroy everything that is good in himself.

 

In like vein, In the Valley of Elah is a powerful, realistic snapshot of America at the crossroads, taking stock of everything it stands for.

 

Based on real events, Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield, an ex-army man who served in Bosnia, whose son Mike (Jonathan Tucker) is reported AWOL from his army barracks, a week after having returned from service in Iraq.

 

Mike is the second son of Hank and his wife Joan (Susan Sarandon). Their first was accidentally killed during army training. Hank, a former military policeman is disturbed by the news that his son is missing, and he decides to investigate for himself.

 

He goes first to the police station nearest his son's barracks where he meets Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), a conscientious detective who is taunted by her male peers because of her sex. She tells Hank that Mike's disappearance is a military matter, and outside police.

 

When news arrives that the remains of a half-burnt  body found in a New Mexico field belong to Mike, Emily contacts Hank, and stirred by his determination to uncover what happened to Mike, grief, agrees to help him.

 

Written and directed by Paul Haggis, In the Valley of Elah takes its name from the valley in Judea where David fought Goliath. But rather than being a tale of triumph over impossible odds, it is about the magnitude of the struggle ahead for both Hank and his country.

 

The film presents America as a nation in mourning for its past and uncertain of the future. The David and Goliath motif is introduced into the story rather clumsily. More powerful and relevant, though, is the film's final sequence, in which Hank, unsmiling and as grimly dogged as ever, unpacks a tattered Old Glory, and flies it from his flagpole.

 

 

 

Films are not something I regularly stretch to in this column, mainly because I don't have a lot of time to see them. But a real gem is currently playing in Sydney that should be seen by everyone who likes a beautiful story.

 

Bella is set in New York and revolves around the drama that overtakes the lives of two people who only know each other through their work at a Mexican restaurant.

 

Nina, played by Emmy Award winner Tammy Blanchard, is completely alone in the world. An only child, her father died when she was 12 and left her mother crippled by grief. With no extended family she had to bring herself up and care for her mother.

 

So when she finds out she is pregnant she has no one to turn to for help. We don't meet her partner in the film, but it is clear that she does not see him as someone to build a life with. He just wants her to "fix" the problem. Nina is also clear that she is not ready to have a child.

 

Circumstances seem to reinforce this decision. Morning sickness makes her late for work once too often, and she is sacked. Things just seem to go from bad to worse.

 

Jose, played by a young Mexican actor Eduardo Verastegui, is the restaurant's chef and the owner's brother. He sees the harsh way in which his brother sacks Nina, and follows her as she leaves to offer his support.

 

In the course of the day they spend together, Nina tells Jose she is pregnant and that abortion is her only way out. She rejects the idea of adoption because it seems an even worse thing to do: to bring a child into the world and then to abandon it to strangers and an unknown fate.  Jose does not pressure Nina. He understands she is vulnerable and struggling with an awful challenge. He also has demons of his own.

 

Some years before he accidentally ran over a little girl, the only child of a single mother. He refused to flee the scene, even though he had just signed a contract to begin a professional soccer career, and served time in gaol for manslaughter. As he says to Nina, he lost five years of his life, but from the mother of the little girl he killed he took everything she had.

 

Nina gradually begins to trust him and challenges him to give her a way out.  The film ends with him doing just this in an unexpected and beautiful way.

 

Bella is a moving affirmation of the reality of knowing that when one is a parent it is forever and that children are one of God's greatest gifts. So too is love.

 

+ CARDINAL GEORGE PELL, Archbishop of Sydney
first published as a column in the Sunday Telegraph

 

 

 

 

From within the unique architecture of Australia's newest Roman Catholic Cathedral (designed by the architect of Parliament House in Canberra) comes a massed celebration of hymns and anthems to mark Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. Featuring Bishop Kevin Manning of  Parramatta and Peter Williams, former Dean of the Cathedral. Music directed by Bernard Kirkpatrick.

 

Compass, with Geraldine Doogue

 

The story of a German missionary's life in Papua New Guinea through the eyes of his Australian great niece. Fr John Nilles arrived in 1937 to live with the Chimbu. He learnt their language and way of life, introduced them to God and Western culture and much more.

 

He stayed 54 years, becoming an anthropologist, linguist, politician and clan leader. His great-niece journeys to the highlands to piece together this moving portrait told through his diaries, letters, photos, archive and interviews with the people of PNG who knew him. There are also visually charming 'postage stamp' graphics evocative of a bygone era effectively used as transition/turning points.

 

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