The Need to Make Sense of a World

I should disclose a bit about my film habits I suppose:

1. Take several viewings - A friend once asked me, "Why would you want to watch a movie that you've already seen?" The revisionist in me would like to think that I had my witty retort at hand, but this was, alas, one of those lost opportunities when the comeback didn't occur to me until I was later replaying the conversation in my head: "Couldn't we say the same about food? Why do you need to have a steak again? You've already eaten one and know how it tastes." The fact is I like to test movies. Multiple viewings allow me to determine if my initial thoughts on the movie were justified, to peel back layers of a complex film or to expose weaknesses that I had originally been willing to overlook because of my initial favorable bias. 
2. I try to reserve emphatic judgments - I find myself a bit skeptical about critics who can quickly utter self-assured pronouncements less than twenty-four hours after a first viewing. Such snap judgments don't provide the time to interrogate other factors that might have affected my perception (e.g. a friend or press that built up unreasonable expectations, mood/fatigue, unfavorable viewing environment). Maybe the "professionals" have developed such a highly trained evaluative abilities that these hardly factor, but I tend to doubt it.
3. I don't rent; I buy - This might seem financially irresponsible, but I wait for a while. I do my research. I talk to friends or read critics whose tastes tend to parallel my own. By the time I've made a decision to buy, I have a pretty good idea of at least what the film is trying to accomplish. More often than not, it ends up being a film that will at least be interesting to test in the above fashion multiple times. (In addition, I suppose a certain part of me sees films as embodiments of ideas and owning many allows me to, in a tangible fashion, surround myself with ideas.)

So, when I found the Robert DeNiro picture The Good Shepherd in the discount bin at a local supermarket, the buzz that had built up around it (for the last three years) and the fact that it was only six dollars enabled my justification at buying yet another movie.

It was another couple of weeks before my wife and I got the opportunity to sit down to watch it. Since mine was the more favorable response, I will share it first. At an 1:45:09 the film was beginning to feel long. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing with long movies, and in the wrong context the complaint "It was too long!" could make me wish for movie-watching licenses that could be revoked with documented idiocy. A film's feeling long is another issue. The cinematography was beautiful, the acting relatively able, and the broad chronological and geographcial scope seemed like the stuff of moving epic, but... maybe the problem I had with the movie was on this last point. I remember studying Orson Welles's oft-hyped (but I have come to believe incredible) Citizen Kane. Early versions of Mankiewicz's screenplay, as I recall, did not have the "Rosebud" story line but created a blanket study of the life of a great but troubled man. Critics have argued over its meaning or whether it even was supposed to hold meaning in the first place, but the best case for its role as a narrative red herring may lay in the degree to which the film's structure would have fallen apart without it. Can those of you who have seen the movie even begin to imagine it without Rosebud? What would it be? Well, The Good Shepherd gives us at least a pretty good idea of what it would feel like.

My wife's utter disgust that she had lost that two-and-a-half hours and my puzzlement I think arose out of Deniro's trust that the scope and politically intriguing nature of the subject matter would be enough to hold our attention, but it was not. And the mixed reviews  it received (which you can see here if you are so inclined) also testify to that fact, but what I find worth talking about is the question of why we need that hook. I am open to your comments as you muse on this question, but my initial thoughts took two directions: 1) In our finitude, we need limitation, or we just get confused, and 2) In our quest to identify with character we need a totem that represents personal (as opposed to broadly philosophical or organizational) interests. That totem need not be a physical item as it turned out to be in Kane, but it needs to be something that matters to a private passion.

Naturally, this got me thinking about aspects of my faith. If you are like me, you get tired of hearing Christians spout the cliche, "It's not about religion; it's about relationship," but there's a truth hidden in the platitude (despite the fact that those who speak it often ignore that truth). Ostensibly, ideologies are theorized and organizations founded to advance the cause of humanity, but there's a grand difference between such causes and actually loving people. The life story of Mohandas Gandhi was ultimately compelling on film because it was about his love of individual people, all those people with whom he had contact, including the British colonists - and not abstract love, but one that would gladly give of himself to feed or nurture.

And Christian religion has its own "hook" to drive home the point of that kind of love: culinary elements - totems, if you will - that make us say to ourselves, "This was not ideology for whom this person gave flesh and blood. It was me. And as we partake of those elements, that hook becomes clear to us in a way that we just can't get from preaching, no matter how charismatic.