I’ve been revisiting some classic movies – chronologically – and the most recent was Children of Paradise (Carne, 1945). It is deservedly ranked among the greats, as an artistic achievement and as engaging entertainment. It makes some good points, e.g. the idea of truth as a revealing or unveiling of the meaning behind visible phenomena, which is characteristic of poetic realism. It also shows due respect for ordinary people, the “gods” in the theater balcony. However, from a Christian perspective, I find serious deficiencies in its message.
Like many movies, it presents a compelling and true picture of vanity. Beginning and ending in street carnivals, its main characters are actors and role-players, both by vocation and in their personal lives. Their “love” relationships are totally unsatisfying and dysfunctional, with everyone pining for the unobtainable, harboring immature and selfish notions about love. Their lives are superficial tragic-comic dramas.
All this is true to life for many people, but it is only a half-truth, in that there is no hint or prospect of hope. The characters are well-developed, and you care about them, but there is hardly any character development. It presents an overly pessimistic, cynical, even nihilistic view of life. This has been a trend in many subsequent European movies, e.g. by Antonioni and Fellini. Such movies seem to wallow in vanity, leaving it ambiguous as to whether it’s a critique, or a despairing acceptance, or an embrace (e.g. L’Aventurra, 8 1/2). This is also the final resting place of Bergman, who eventually gave up the struggle with his strawman spider-god, and resigned himself to hedonism in Fanny & Alexander. I suppose it’s also the theme of David Lynch’s absurd surrealism. His movies, such as EraserHead, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, are very clever and intriguing, enticing the viewer to solve the puzzles, but generally to no worthy end. He seems to be challenging us to the impossible task of constructing coherence, in order to convert us to Nihilism. I expect Qoheleth would reckon all this as madness and vanity.
On the other hand, I consider Tarkovsky as highly profitable. His movies are just as perplexing and puzzling, he freely and ambiguously intermingles dreams and “reality”, but in the end, he has important things to say. With some effort, one can take away something worthwhile. Perhaps it’s that surrealism as an artistic method can be put to good use, but as a philosophy it is vanity.
Thus, I draw a distinction between movies that present dismal situations and perplexing mysteries as challenges to overcome, and movies that just seem to say there is nothing more to life, so give up the search. Such emptiness invites evil. It is a destructive influence on civilization, like telling a suicidal person: “why not?” For this, I find fault.