Out of Egypt:

saw i heart huckabees tonight

Was a little disappointed. I was hoping there would be more "real" philosophy in the film. It really seemed like just a string of buzzwords. At the end the characters were basically doing what they had been doing before, they just felt better about it. Dustin Hoffman's character may have said "I'm not a therapist" but that's really all that philosophy ends up doing in the movie. It's palliative, just like the unthinking suburbanite mindset Mark Wahlberg's character is so upset about.

The movie was hilarious and the characters brilliantly drawn - not too sympathetic though. I would've thought they would've wanted to make the Jason Schwartzmann-Jude Law antithesis clearer by making J.S.'s character less idealistic or at least a better poet. After all, going in the front door with a suit and tie, as Jude Law says, is what gets things done (if you know what you want to do, beyond keep up appearances, as he did). Contra Will's joking comment, it's still truth even if a bastard says it. But of course, maybe we're not really to think the movie is endorsing J.S.'s lifestyle.

J.S.'s statements in the end scene may be true - interconnectedness comes from pain, but still that doesn't answer the why question. Why is the world as it is? And why do people long, or even have the ability to conceive another? Christianity can answer these questions, can give the teleological direction that the movie's New Agey being philosophy lacks. Teleological because ethical because narrative - the world created by a Person for a purpose, humans created for communion, communion broken, communion restored in Christ. How unfortunate that the movie only shows Christians who haven't thought through the implications of their own doctrines. They are like Jude Law in some sense: they follow a convention, a code without really knowing why.

And, yet, amazingly some such as these will gain the Kingdom. But, oh, for those who are able to take part in the dialogue with those whose questions are about suffering and disconnection rather than sin, being-oriented vs. Law-oriented types. They seem to be the larger category today, since people, by and large, have lost a sense of guilt and gained a sense of lostness. St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation is great at addressing these kind of questions: fellowship restored by renewal of the Image of God in man through the coming of Christ.

"Dear children, we are now the children of God, and it is not yet revealed what we will be. But we know that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." - the words of the Apostle John, among my favorite of the Scripture