Abre Los Eyes

5 Favorite Catholic Movie Characters

I come from a family of artists.  My dad is an artist - he paints and, as a side job away from his podiatrist assistant’s 9-to-5, renovates old paintings.  Clients bring him these monster-sized portraits, sometimes with holes in them, and he patches them up, refurbishes the paint, makes it look brand new.  He also renovates statues.  Once my father was redoing a statue of the Blessed Virgin from our parish in our basement - a huge statute, pretty much my height (5’1).  I had no idea it was down there, and when I turned on the light, I screamed.  Which is pretty much the reaction I think I would have if I ever saw the Blessed Virgin in real life.

My mom is a writer - she’s really poetic and writes letters like nobody’s business.  She’s working on a side project right now as she’s going through her stuff, a piece about growing up in her neighborhood in New York, a place called Inwood. New York City in the 1960s seems just like Neverland, honestly - a magical land where kids weren’t allowed indoors when the sun was out - no adults anywhere, just kids roaming the street, chasing down Mr. Softee.

My brother E is an artist too - he writes and directs plays and short films.  When we were in college he set the university’s record for most highly attended shows, and he’s always coming up with good ideas.

My brother J is a musician, and he composes his own work.  He’s a crazy-good blues guitarist, as well - he taught himself how to play when he was a kid.  He could just hear the notes and find them on the guitar like it was a game.  My dad was like that too, just with cartoons on TV.  He could just see them and draw them right in front of him.  Never had one lesson.

I’m in artist in that I can’t do math and I don’t like science.

__

I read somewhere once that Catholic directors make better movies than directors of other Christian denominations because we’re not as literal towards Scripture - and, well, life - as they can be.  It makes sense to me.  I mean, looking at a movie that I would consider pretty heavy with Catholic themes - like The Mission, for example - has much more of a richness, or a fullness, to it, than, say, the Left Behind movie.  And let’s face it: because Catholicism focuses so much on the idea of suffering and redemption, that arc makes for some pretty awesome films.

To that end, here are five of my favorite Catholic film characters:

5.  Mary Clancy, The Trouble With Angels (1966)

I first watched The Trouble With Angels with my mother when I was in high school.  Hilarious and touching, it’s a great family film about a pair of girls at a Catholic boarding school who will do anything to rebel against the Mother Superior (a fantastic Rosalind Russell).  The film includes all the normal hijinks (goofily breaking stuff, sneaking cigarettes, that sort of thing) but it’s the transformation that Hayley Mills’ character, Mary, makes from disastrous girl to respectful young woman that makes it so great.

4.  Jeanne d’Arc, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

Okay, not gonna lie: this was a trippy movie.  Lots of blood, as you’d expect from a movie that took place during the Hundred Years’ War, but it’s really graphic and 80% of the movie is just…gross.  But Jeanne’s character (played by a really good Milla Jovovich) turns most people’s idea of who Joan of Arc was on on its head: she’s completely stubborn, extremely tenacious, and gives a lot of flavor to the title of sainthood.  Not to mention that I could totally see myself in this fun exchange, between Jeanne and one of her soldiers, Aulon, after she cuts her hair off in anger because no one will respect her on account of being a woman:

Aulon: Jeanne, stop it! (Snatching the scissors away from Jeanne)
Joan of Arc: How dare you stop me from doing God’s will?
Aulon: He didn’t tell you to cut all your hair.
Joan of Arc: How dare you tell me what God tells me to do?
Aulon: Whatever, but…(exasperated) since he’s not going to come down and do it himself - I mean - at least let someone cut it properly!

3.  Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited (2008/1981)

The novel Brideshead Revisited holds a special place in my heart.  We read it my first year of grad school and I completely fell in love with it.  It’s one of the more controversial Catholic novels, presumably on account of all of the inherent (yet very blurry) homosexual overtones, but man, it’s great.  It’s the story of Charles Ryder, an agnostic young man, and his relationship with Sebastian Flyte and his Catholic family.  It devles into the messiness of Catholicism: the guilt, the honor, and the pageantry, bringing to light the tension that exists between knowing the truth and not being able to ever un-know it, no matter what you do.  And Sebastian’s character is the height of that suffering/redemption arc I mentioned earlier.  His ascent and descent through his guilt/alcoholism is much better expressed in the 1981 BBC version by Anthony Andrews than in the 2008 version by Ben Whishaw, although Whishaw is admittedly more fun to look at.

2.  William Wallace, Braveheart (1995)

I think I first saw this in the theater, and it’s definitely the kind of film to see there: sweeping, epic, larger-than-life.  Like The Messenger,this film doesn’t hold back from showing the gore-iness of war, but the mud-to-blood ratio is at least somewhat in balance, whereas in The Messenger it’s mostly just blood.   Like Catholics tend to do, William Wallace (a pre-troubled Mel Gibson) fights for the underdog (the entire Scottish nation, to obtain its freedom from English rule), and in the process illuminates a Catholicism that a lot of people today shy away from: the troublemaker.  It’s a lot easier to be a religious person who keeps to themselves, but to be one that stirs the pot is always needed.  Wallace shows what happens when a person refuses to be compromised, and the result is a beautifully shot, really good film that still holds up when watched between long periods of time.

1.  Maria Von Trapp, The Sound of Music (1965)

I know.  It’s so cliche. So obvious. But I  couldn’t help it.  Maria Von Trapp (played by the incomparable Julie Andrews) was the original triple threat: she could sing, she could dance, and she could break all seven of the Von Trapp kids like a horse.  She was a lot of fun, the kind of governess I wish I would have had, had my parents had that sort of money and/or believed in governesses.  And The Sound of Music is one of those rare films that captures the loving side of Catholicism.  Sure, the nuns are gossipy and exasperated, but they’re also loving, courageous, and could stare down the Nazis with the best of them.  The Sound of Music is one of my favorites, and if you haven’t seen it, you probably don’t have a soul.

Just kidding.

I’m sure I’ll do more of these soon, mainly because it’s an incomplete list.  (In fact, I know I will, since there’s no way I’m mentioning Catholic movies without mentioning both The Godfather trilogy and every Martin Scorsese film ever made.  They just seemed out of place for the first go-round.)

What are your faves?

Some news.

My mom was diagnosed today with Acinic Cell Carcinoma, a cancer of the salivary glands. She’s unemployed and without health insurance and the money for her biopsies were donated by their church and by friends, so it’s a worrisome time for more than a few reasons. We’re praying that her Federal Disability application goes through so she can get treated, and mostly we’re praying that she doesn’t give up hope and keeps trusting in God through this time.

After I got off of the phone with her all I could think about was a song by a Christian band called the O.C. Supertones, and their song called “Jury Duty”:

Though I haven’t had the best of days
Still I want to stop and thank You anyway
Every single moment, whether sleeping or awake
is Your creation, and what You’ve made is good

I don’t always thank You for the rough days
and the hard times in my life,
even though I should

Everything is God’s, the good days and the ones that aren’t worth saving.

Thanks so much for your continued prayers for her and my family. :)

Ordinations!

Last Saturday I attended the priestly ordination of one of my good friends from NJ, who was one of 18 men to join the priesthood in service to the Archdiocese of Newark.  The Cathedral (which is one of the most beautiful in the country) was absolutely packed, and I got to run into other friends I hadn’t seen since my move to Pittsburgh three years ago.

I love ordinations.  I love the pageantry of it:  the incense, the choir, the processions.  I love seeing guys I knew as seminarians in college walking down the aisle towards the new ordinandi as seasoned priests themselves.  I love getting to see these new guys in action, giving up what the world calls a normal life (a 9-5 job, getting married, raising kids, going into debt) in order to listen to - and carry out - the mission that God gives us of loving His people fully.  I love to see their listening really meant something: that they loved God enough to put aside what they wanted for their own lives.   Because although it’s such a joy to serve God in that way, it’s a sacrifice for so many of them.

The ceremony was wonderful, but clocking in at just about three hours, it was long.  And although we got there before it all started, it was standing room only for us and about a hundred people.  And although I used to work at the ordinations every year as the PR Specialist for the Archdiocese and knew how long they would be, I had somehow forgotten that and developed the good idea to wear high heels.

You know, you try to be a girl, for just a day, and…ugh.

But hey: one of the best things about Catholicism is that you can dedicate any type of suffering you’re going through as a way to help others, known as “offering it up.”  The thinking goes that for all the suffering you endure, you can use your sacrifice to gain graces for others, to relieve their suffering.  [I’ve read about Catholic women going epidural-free during labor and offering up their crazy-intense labor pain for someone else.  Yeah, I probably won’t be doing that.]  So as I stood there with my husband and another friend, my little piggies swollen and overheated, I decided to offer up my foot pain for Bob, that he’d be a great priest and would serve God’s people well.  It didn’t count if I told anyone,  so I stood in silence, trying to shift my weight from foot to foot every few minutes.

I made it for about an hour, after which I broke down and slipped out of the shoes, standing with my bare feet on the cold marble floor for a bit.  I don’t know how long that translates into Grace Time, but hopefully I’ve bought him enough credits for a Good Priest Hour.  Maybe it’ll kick in when he needs it the most, like on a mission trip or during an hour of prayer, and not when he’s sleeping or on vacation or whatever.

But even so, I think it’d be worth it.  

:)

incharityandtruth asked: Hi! You mentioned a while ago that you'd be interested in writing for a Catholic collaborative blog if I started one. Are you still interested? I finally got it up and running! check it out: http://catholiccolab.tumblr.com/ If you are still interested if you give me your email address I can invite you to join as a collaborative author. God Bless!

Sure! I’m at openthoseojos [at] gmail.com.  

Know Your History.

I don’t know what Jesus expected when He preached.  I don’t know if He knew beforehand that He would be very nearly thrown out of the city on multiple occasions; that He would be denied by one of His best friends just before He died; that He would be sold out by someone who followed Him around for years.

Does it matter? It might.  If He knew ahead of time, before He was begotten by the Father and born into humanity, all that lay – in some sense – before Him, and did it anyway, well, that’s heroic.  Epic-type heroic.  Necessary.  Humbling.  If He didn’t, and learned along the way most of us do when it comes to living life, it’s still, well, heroic.  Humbling.  Because He kept going when He didn’t have the history to back up the knowledge of His fruition.

I don’t know.  It could’ve been a little of both, maybe, the way all things are a little of both.  Maybe He knew and learned, through looking back and studying the history and Scripture to place Himself in the space of prophet.  Maybe it made things easier to take if He knew His prayers were really answered because His bond to the Father was so intimate, so close, that He breathed in His Father and His Father breathed in Him through the Spirit that they truly were one.  And they were, because Jesus told us so.

Man, to be one like that.  To be one with anything.

A lot of examples, here, a lot of lessons: 1) Persevere; 2) Know your history; 3) Pray to be as close to God through prayer as Jesus was.

If we do those three things more, maybe life would be a bit easier to take.  We’d know more than ever that God is with us, that Jesus is assisting us.  We’d understand the meaning of running so as to win.  And we’d be connected with everyone – past and present – through our experiences.

Pretty sweet deal, I think.