June 09, 2004

Popcorn blog

Tim wrote some stuff about Casablanca as part of the "Popcorn blog" exercise that various people are participating in.

Things like this can be fun, but they also have the potential to be rather hokey. I mean, sure, literary criticism is a lot of fun, and is a useful exercise, but literary criticism with a particular agenda -- attempting to draw a particular conclusion -- has the potential to be academically dishonest, and a whole lot of hooey.

I'd say that it's hard to find any half-way decent movie that is *not* about salvation. That's why we enjoy watching movies, right? Because the good triumphs over the evil. Which is how Tim defines Salvation in his remarks. Sort of.

Strangely, it is the movies that are not about salvation - that is, the movies that have unexpected endings - which are often the more intrigueing ones, and the ones that make you think about your assumptions of what salvation actually is.

Like, say, Unbreakable, or The Talented Mr Ripley.

Because maybe, just maybe, they are about salvation after all.

For some of my more favorite "salvation" movies, I'd have to also recommend Unforgiven and The Shawshank Redemption. And for, perhaps, a more controversial one, A Clockwork Orange.

I look forward to seeing what some of the folks have to say about a few of the movies on the list.

Posted by rbowen at June 9, 2004 08:02 PM | TrackBack
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