Into the Dark

One of our favorite things to do is analyze film. We watch an array of movies from art films to comedy and from classics to documentaries. We love movies, but even more, we love the art form that film lends itself to, filled with symbolism and meaning, a new way to look at the world: physical and spiritual. One of our favorite websites in rednow.com that was started by a couple of Young Life guys.

According to the site, "As we pile experience on top of experience, we long for ways to understand what we are feeling and thinking....rednoW exists for this reason. We feel strongly that the sounds and images that are causing us to wonder the most are doing so for a reason. These wonder inspiring encounters act as signposts pointing towards a deeper truth for which we long. We see filmmakers and musicians as Poets, Prophets and Preachers—and here at rednoW we gather and listen with great expectation." Beautiful...I encourage everyone to check out this website!This year, rednoW is doing something based on Craig Detweiler's (a Christian filmmaker and analysis guru) newest book "Into the Dark" in which each month, 5 movies are selected (in theaters, emerging canon, documentary, foreign, and an older film (pre-2000)) and then discussed and analyzed through group forums on the website.Needless to say, Kyle and I are thrilled, signed up, and beginning with the 2006 movie (emerging canon), "The Prestige". Here are our thoughts that we posted in the forum:

• Brilliant film! The word that comes to mind while digging into this movie is "Truth". Every element of the film is based around finding the truth, hiding the truth, knowing the truth,disguising the truth, forgetting the truth, understanding the truth. The first person in the movie who knows the truth is the little boy at the magic show who cries at the knowledge of the dead bird. "Where is his brother?" he exclaims, not being fooled by the illusion. The truth brings him fear and remorse. The relationship between the two Borden's and the wife is littered with lies amongst the pure truth of love. She looks through those lies to try to find if her husband loves her. "You mean it today," she says, deciphering it from the times when she can tell that he doesn't. Towards the end of the movie she says, in a fit of rage, "I want you to be honest with me...no tricks, no lies, no secrets...do you love me?" In which he replies, "Not today". She later hangs herself. The truth killed her.
  
  The first glimpse we get of the danger of truth is when Cutter is showing the box to the buyer. Cutter tells him that it is, "...too dangerous", to which he replies, "I'm sure underneath all it's bells and whistles, it has a disappointing trick". "It has no trick," replies Cutter, "It's real." It is not the tricks and illusions that are dangerous, it's the Truth.
  
  Angier does not begin with this pursuit of truth, but steadily evolves throughout the film. At the death of his wife we see his desire for vengeance ("I don't care about my wife, I care about his secret!") that turns into curiosity to envy and pride, to finally, power. Truth holds power.
  
  When Angier is first seeking the truth in his profession, Cutter says to him, "You have to get your hands dirty if you want to achieve the impossible". As he gets closer to the "real trick", Borden says to him, "Finally getting your hands dirty, are you?" At the end, from his jail cell where he is waiting to be hanged, Borden tell's Angier, "You're not afraid to get your hands dirty". Perhaps it is not Truth itself that brings these ideas to the surface, but rather what we do with the truth. Borden and Angier both discover a real "trick" but do the do the same thing with it?
  
  The physicist Tesla says, "People are happy to be mystified" and Angier in his last breath says, "The audience knows the truth, the world is miserable, but if you can fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder". At the end Cutter says, "You don't find it because you aren't looking for it...you want to be fooled". Does this succumb to Thomas Gray's idea that, "Ignorance is bliss?"
  
  How, as Christians, do we respond to this portrayal of truth?