Religion and Film 2019

In Dead Man, the protagonist, William Blake, goes on an extensive spiritual journey culminating in his death. For this reason, I think the spiritual journey that Blake goes through is even more extensive than the one Hirata goes through in Cold Fever. They both face trials and tribulations along the way, but Blake ultimately dies, while Hirata gets to return home. While Hirata is in danger at times and definitely out of his comfort zone, Blake’s life is in harm’s way for the majority of the film. Blake meets a large Native American man soon after he is shot and running away from bounty hunters. The man reveals to Blake that the bullet that struck him cannot be removed or he will die; thus, Blake is a dead man. The man tells Blake his name is Nobody, and when Blake tells Nobody his name, Nobody is taken back. He thinks that Blake is in fact the old English poet William Blake. Nobody then believes it his duty to lead Blake to what he calls the “spirit world” now that Blake is a dead m...

In the Decalogue films, the movie portrays separate stories that each depict one of the Ten Commandments. They each attempt to show what God meant by his words in the commandments, so they expand on the meaning more than just the literal words. In this way, the film acts as midrash, or commentary on the ancient Hebrew texts. Also, much like how many parts of the Bible are up to interpretation, these stories shown are up for interpretation. There is no in-your-face meaning, instead the viewers must focus and struggle to interpret the stories for themselves. In the first film, there are visuals that help the viewer find the meaning. The one that comes to mind is the computer. Pavel and his father trust that this computer knows all the answers, and even trust it with Pavel’s life. However, Pavel ends up dying because he trusts the computer, showing the meaning of the first commandment “thou shalt not have strange gods before Me” meaning that there is one true God. The next film we w...

In the postmodern, Western film,  Dead Man,  William Blake travels from Cleveland to the wild, wild town of Machine to work a new accounting job.  Unfortunately, another man has taken his job, so William Blake is left stranded in an unfamiliar place.  He feels lost in the town and seeks refuge with a woman, who he helped off the ground.  The next day, this woman's ex-lover finds William and her in bed together, which results in the man killing the woman and Blake killing the ex-lover.  The now dead ex-lover was the son of man who refused to give Blake the promised accounting job, John Dickinson.  After Blake escapes town, Dickinson hires bounty hunters and labels William Blake a dead man. In the film, Cold Fever , Hirata, a Japanese business man, feels disconnected in the foreign land of Iceland.  Hirata and Blake are both foreigners in a very different environment and feel like a fish out of water.  The alien territory m...

William Blake in Dead Man is thrust from his normal accountant life into a run away murderer that is very contrary to his profane life and character. He discovers a unfamiliar side of life as he travels out West to escape, interacting with Native Americans, being shot and thrown into chaotic life as an outlaw. He searches for spiritual meaning in his inevitable death throughout the film similar to how Hirata embarks on the spiritual journey to fulfill his past away parent's resting rituals. They are similar in that both William and Hirata are hesitant and in questionable about the unknowns they each face on their physical and spiritual journey and really do not know what to expect until they find their true sacred meanings at the conclusion. I find William to be in refutation about his inescapable death and this is why he chooses the flight in a fight or flight mindset. He does not see his true meaning until later in the journey similar to how Hirata did really understand why he w...

Cold Fever and Dead Man both heavily rely on funeral rituals. Both main characters are slowly headed towards performing one, whether they know it or not. What struck me about William's Blake character is that he never seems to be aware of his slow approach towards death. He does not seem to realize he is mortally wounded, and perhaps if he could get back to civilization, he could survive. At the end of the film, William is still alive during his own funeral, making him an active participate in the ritual similar to Hirata's participation in his parents' burial rites. Both protagonists are in denial about something. For William, he is denial about his mortality, whereas Hirata is in denial about the importance and sacredness of a funeral ritual. Their journeys parallel each other in that regard, as they come closer to realizing what is truly important in their respective lives. By having Johnny Depp's character named after a famous English poet, it lets the character b...

William Blake is man on a journey to find meaning by accepting his own death. In Cold Fever , Hirata is a man in the same search of the penultimate meaning in life, particularly in the wake of his parent’s tragic death. In both cases, both protagonists feel a paralyzing sense that life is cut short, and the wrestle to reconcile this in spiritual terms. In Nobody’s emphatic romanticization of the transformative power of the real poet, the famous William Blake’s extensive works, Nobody crafts a persona that appeals to Blake’s sense of directionlessness. With the assumption already made of him, Blake simply decides to welcome it, and we see Blake gradually step more and more into the role as he finds meaning. On the other hand, there is this opposing notion of the outlaw identity being continuously projected onto Blake, again based on false pretenses. Blake’s first lethal shot was poorly fired from underneath the dead corpse of a woman in self defense of a murderer’s advances. Yet, the...

Kieslowski's  Decalogue captures the experience of Midrash as the viewers struggle to find the meaning of the film and associate it with the Ten Commandments.  However, in the films that we saw in class, I was able to make personal connection with the characters and the theme which helped me develop a significant meaning behind it. Kieslowski does not portray these Commandments by drilling the meaning into us through obvious representation. Instead I found that through Decalogue I and V ,  he displayed the meaning through emotion and sometimes exaggerated situations that we all understand. In the background, we saw that Midrash is defined to "minimize the literal meaning of the text and force the reader to struggle with the meaning, to make the meaning personal." This is strongly true of the film, except Midrash is shown visually rather than in written texts.  In Decalogue I , I struggled to find meaning through the first half until Pavel had first gone missing. T...

Colleen Real In the assignment description, Kieslowski describes Midrash as " to minimize the literal meaning of the text and force the reader to struggle with the meaning, to make the meaning personal". This means that the viewer is supposed to figure out the meaning to them and not take it so literally. Kieslowski's description also says that "the tradition of Midrash focuses on legal and homiletical Biblical texts". Decalogue  portays Midrash well as the series displays an episode for each of the ten commandments. The first episode we discussed was on the first commandment, which states "thou shalt have no other gods before me". Basically referring to those who believe in other gods and ideals when there should only be a belief in the one.  In this particular film the "other god" happens to be technology, a computer to be specific. Pavel's father in this film puts his faith in the computer and thought that everything could be measure...

Corinne Whalen 2/2/19 In our description for the assignment, midrash is described as, “minimizing the literal meaning of the text and force the reader to struggle with the meaning, to make the meaning personal.” As well as this, the description mentions that midrash is meant to focus on Biblical texts. Decalogue portrays this very well because the whole series is based on the ten commandments. The first episode that we watched was about the first commandment which basically means that there are people that believe in other gods or ideals, but that there should only be belief in the one – monotheism. With this being said, in the film, the “god” that was being focused on was technology. We even saw that in the film, Pavel and his father would notice that the computer would have a mind of its own. I believe that with this, it showed how technology has taken over a big piece of our lives, and is swaying us away from what we’ve believed before. The second episode that we watched...