Millions and Millions
As a treat for Easter (well, my second treat, the first being that I had chocolate ice cream - with chocolate sprinkles and a bit of a brownie mashed in - for lunch) I went to see the new Danny Boyle flick Millions at the new Criterion theater. (The theater, by the way, is excellent: good sound, comfy seats, very clean.)
I was expecting a lighthearted fable, charmingly overdirected in the classic Danny Boyle style, a pleasant diversion. In retrospect, I set my sights too low. The movie was fantastic. And not just because I have a soft spot for shy Irish-diaspora boys who've lost their mother (though, of course, I do). The movie's excellently made, surprisingly serious and lighthearted at the same time. It's also one of the most Catholic movies I've ever seen, certainly the most since The Passion.
This is best seen in the movie's treatment of the saints. The movie's not especially theological, but it is suffused with a very Catholic sense of the nature of the Communion of Saints. The saints aren't just moral exemplars from the past, or the denizens of the heavenly kingdom, or even supernatural presences who can be called on for aid in specific circumstances. They're family, just one branch of a Church that spans Heaven and Earth (and Purgatory), a big extended family with members visible and invisible that's always around, like an Irish wake that never ends. The saints are beings whose presence is as ordinary and intimate as their power to help is strange and miraculous. The movie excellently captures the odd mix of the reverent and the casual that characterizes the relationship between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. The lead boy, Damian, has a series of encounters with notable saints - Clare and Francis of Assisi, Nicholas of Myra, St Joseph - that all begin the same way: he recites the name and dates of birth and death of the saint, as if he were still reading from his child's book of saint's lives. They then proceed to have a remarkably ordinary conversation, as if they were simply old friends catching up. Damian is both awed and utterly non-plussed by his miraculous visitations. In one scene, he strips naked (offscreen) in front of St Peter as he changes into his pajamas. In another, he's completely unphased to discover the Ugandan Martyrs repairing the fort he's built for himself from cardboard boxes. The whole movie is suffused with the sense that the saints are a constant presence in our lives, giving us aid both practical and supernatural and protecting us from harm. Even when they're just shuffling around in the background, the saints are always with us.
The movie (or most of it, at least) is also remarkably moral. It's not that the characters are plaster saints who always do the right thing. Indeed, all of the characters wind up seriously (if subtly) compromised at some point. But moral questions, and a sense the importance of grappling with the moral questions that life presents, are all over the film. This too marks the film as uniquely Catholic. Not that Catholics have some monopoly on the moral life or on moral reasoning, but the way the questions are (implicitly) framed suggests (to me, at least; I may have an over-eager eye for these things) that the movie draws heavily on the general moral teachings of the Church and its catechism: that some things (like stealing) are intrinsically evil, that we must not do evil so that good might occur, but that God can bring good out of evil, that "sin darkens the intellect". Again, it's not that the characters unfailingly keep these principles - indeed, by and large, they don't - but that these notions of the good life suffuse the story and frame the choices that the characters have to make.
I don't want to say to much more, for fear of ruining the movie. Suffice it to say: it was a charming tale of surprising depth. It gets the Fox's full endorsement. See it at your next convenience.
I was expecting a lighthearted fable, charmingly overdirected in the classic Danny Boyle style, a pleasant diversion. In retrospect, I set my sights too low. The movie was fantastic. And not just because I have a soft spot for shy Irish-diaspora boys who've lost their mother (though, of course, I do). The movie's excellently made, surprisingly serious and lighthearted at the same time. It's also one of the most Catholic movies I've ever seen, certainly the most since The Passion.
This is best seen in the movie's treatment of the saints. The movie's not especially theological, but it is suffused with a very Catholic sense of the nature of the Communion of Saints. The saints aren't just moral exemplars from the past, or the denizens of the heavenly kingdom, or even supernatural presences who can be called on for aid in specific circumstances. They're family, just one branch of a Church that spans Heaven and Earth (and Purgatory), a big extended family with members visible and invisible that's always around, like an Irish wake that never ends. The saints are beings whose presence is as ordinary and intimate as their power to help is strange and miraculous. The movie excellently captures the odd mix of the reverent and the casual that characterizes the relationship between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. The lead boy, Damian, has a series of encounters with notable saints - Clare and Francis of Assisi, Nicholas of Myra, St Joseph - that all begin the same way: he recites the name and dates of birth and death of the saint, as if he were still reading from his child's book of saint's lives. They then proceed to have a remarkably ordinary conversation, as if they were simply old friends catching up. Damian is both awed and utterly non-plussed by his miraculous visitations. In one scene, he strips naked (offscreen) in front of St Peter as he changes into his pajamas. In another, he's completely unphased to discover the Ugandan Martyrs repairing the fort he's built for himself from cardboard boxes. The whole movie is suffused with the sense that the saints are a constant presence in our lives, giving us aid both practical and supernatural and protecting us from harm. Even when they're just shuffling around in the background, the saints are always with us.
The movie (or most of it, at least) is also remarkably moral. It's not that the characters are plaster saints who always do the right thing. Indeed, all of the characters wind up seriously (if subtly) compromised at some point. But moral questions, and a sense the importance of grappling with the moral questions that life presents, are all over the film. This too marks the film as uniquely Catholic. Not that Catholics have some monopoly on the moral life or on moral reasoning, but the way the questions are (implicitly) framed suggests (to me, at least; I may have an over-eager eye for these things) that the movie draws heavily on the general moral teachings of the Church and its catechism: that some things (like stealing) are intrinsically evil, that we must not do evil so that good might occur, but that God can bring good out of evil, that "sin darkens the intellect". Again, it's not that the characters unfailingly keep these principles - indeed, by and large, they don't - but that these notions of the good life suffuse the story and frame the choices that the characters have to make.
I don't want to say to much more, for fear of ruining the movie. Suffice it to say: it was a charming tale of surprising depth. It gets the Fox's full endorsement. See it at your next convenience.
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