Tag: Pullman

A WRINKLE IN TIME – RE-REVIEW – A GLOWING EXAMPLE OF LIBERAL COMMON NON-SENSE

I have long maintained that liberals in Hollywood were willing to throw money away on financing abyssmal movies if they think it will further whatever agenda they are after: socialism, destruction of the definition of marriage, sexualization of children, artifically inflammed racial divisiveness, atheism. I have had a lot of conversations with people who don’t believe me – that they think “Hollywood” will learn their lesson when this or that movie fails.

I hate to disabuse them of the notion that liberals have the slightest bit of common sense but one only needs to read the following article on the deserved thrashing A Wrinkle in Time is getting to understand how far liberals will go: A Wrinkle in Time:…$100 million…Disney…Bomb

In this article you will read quotes by the sneering and smug Ava DuVernay, a stridently vociferous anti-Trump liberal and the director of this $100 million turkey. “I don’t care what anybody thinks about it,” she told the Times. “I know it’s $100 million for the studio. They’ll be fine.” In typical liberalese – she doesn’t care that Disney may have just lost $100 million so she could display her little propaganda tantrum – why SHOULD she care? It’s not her money she is wasting.

For a more detailed review about the movie in general go to my previous review of this waste of celluloid at: A Wrinkle in Time – Disturbing and Repulsive

I don’t feel sorry for Disney. After all they knew what they were getting into when they funded this bomb. But let’s be clear about what it is they have done.

Many of the reviewers went right along with Ms. DuVernay’s sentiment, bending themselves into pretzels attempting to avoid saying A W.I.T. is a BAD movie:

Marie Claire of the Hollywood Reporter: “’A Wrinkle in Time’ isn’t a great movie, but that’s completely irrelevant.”

Yolanda Machado, a free lance film journalist said, “Because of this film, my daughter will never question that she can be strong.”

The FOX article reads: “One reviewer called it a ‘big bold beautiful mess’ before praising DuVernay for ‘swinging for the fences’ with a ‘not great’ script.'”

Ms. DuVernay CLAIMS she is trying to demonstrate that black women can be shown as strong leaders. This is all a massive load of what Biff Tannen and his relatives kept falling head first into in the Back to the Future movies.

For the purpose of the following points some acquaintance of the original book’s story is necessary – check out: Wikipedia Synopsis of: A Wrinkle in Time

First, Meg’s race is irrelevant. Storm Reid is terrific as Meg. The only ones who care what race she is are the liberal racists. The story of A Wrinkle in Time depends on a daughter’s love for her family and not at all on the race of the family members. As long as the genetics are logical or there is a mention of adoption, the young lady could be Chinese, Hispanic, white, black, Indonesian, Aleusian or any combination. (As in, if two white people have a black baby or two black people have a white baby some mention of adoption would need to be thrown into the script for the sake of practicality.) Meg being black has NOTHING to do with the story one way or the other and I couldn’t have cared less. All that is required is acting ability which Ms. Reid has. Meg’s race is irrelevant.

Second, the original story HAD a strong female character that everyone followed. At the risk of SPOILERS, in the end, not even Meg’s father could go back and save Charles Wallace. ONLY – and I repeat this emphasized emphatically ONLY Meg could or was even allowed by the Mrs. W’s to return for her younger brother. Meg was the only one whose love was strong enough. (It was explained that her father had not seen his son in four years and Calvin had only just met him.) Calvin, in the book, followed Meg like a puppy the entire way. He was a strong character in and of himself, but recognized Meg’s purpose and inner vigorous soul. What Ms. DuVernay proposed was nothing Madeleine L’Engle had not already put in the original source material. In other words DUVERNAY IS TAKING PLAGERISTIC CREDIT FOR SOMETHING ALREADY IN THE BOOK!

Third, and most importantly, even if what Ms. DuVernay said was true or even believed was true – that she had sought to make a movie which showed a strong black woman in the lead – there was ZERO reason to make the single change which has made this movie such a spectacular BOMB. Ms. DuVernay has stripped the flesh off of the reason the story was written. She deliberately, and I believe with malice, removed every iota of Christianity there was to be found in what is essentially a Christian allegory.

I really didn’t care one way or another about The Golden Compass. The Golden Compass was another child’s story which was filmed as an anti-religious tome and bombed. The G.C. was written by Philip Pullman, a self-described atheist, as an atheistic yawner and was so filmed, receiving the attention it deserved – earning less than half of its production budget.

But A Wrinkle in Time was created as a CHRISTIAN allegory by a devout CHRISTIAN and DuVernay has gone out of her way to brutalize it. You’d think Disney, if not the agenda-driven Ms. DuVernay, would have exercised more foresight and not dumped quite so much money into a movie which shoves a middle finger in the face of the very demographic who made the source book a children’s classic. I mean – from a business P.O.V. alone you’d think they would have filmed it with the intent with which it was written to bring in the moolah from the audience who liked the book in the first place! But, in keeping with longstanding liberal “ethics,” as long as it is someone else’s money, they do not care if it is thoughtlessly and carelessly fizzled away.

Yes, make the lead child a black girl – make her Tibetan or Hawaiian – who cares one way or the other?  I LOVED Storm Reid as Meg. She brought a fierce intensity to the role as the determined and dogged young lady who devotedly goes to rescue her father in the face of tremendous uncertainities and great evil. It is a tragedy that DuVernay took a great performance and threw it away on her trash fire of New Age proselytizing.

DuVernay is a poster child for my now proven assertion that Hollywood is willing to throw away a fortune to foist their own ungrateful dystopian indoctrination into the very culture that tolerates them the way no other culture would. And until and unless they manage to chokehold us into sponsoring their ideologies through taxation or forced attendance, the movie going public will likely continue to vote with their closed pocketbook.

To sum up – Ms DuVernay is using the race of this lovely child actress as a smoke screen to hide her anti-Christian agenda. And to me this is not just nonsense – it a demonstration of racism, child abuse and religious bigotry. SHAME ON YOU MS. DUVERNAY!!!

WONDER IS, WELL…….WONDERFUL

 

SHORT TAKE:

Wonder is a moving, funny, charming, honest and brilliantly constructed examination of the axiom: You can’t (accurately) judge a book by its cover.

LONG TAKE:

MILD SPOILERS

My husband and I have a shorthand way to refer to a cinematic experience. A good movie is a diverting entertainment. A good film is a piece of literature which makes you a better person for having seen it. Wonder falls into the latter category.

Wonder is based upon a book, also called Wonder, which was inspired by an unfortunate experience of the author, Raquel Jaramillo, writing under the pen name of R. J. Palacio. At an ice cream store with her own young child, they met a child with a severe facial deformity. Her toddler began to cry. Instead of engaging with the child with the facial disfigurement, as she later wished she had done, and show her own child there was nothing to be frightened of, emabarrassed, she instead removed her child from the store, only to realize later that she had effectively ostracized the other child. She "wondered" how she might have handled the situation better.

Wonder is the story which emerged – made up of an amalgam of experiences from real life – of a little boy named August "Auggie" Pullman (played brilliantly by Jacob Tremblay) born with severe facial deformities. He suffers from the genetic mutation known as mandibulofacial dystosis, also known as Treacher Collins Syndrome. Very rare, it results in underdeveloped facial bone structures – the symptoms range from almost undetectable to a face that is unrecognizable. Thankfully, it usually effects almost no other systems – intelligence, internal organs are usually fine. But the trauma for both child and parents in overcoming the challenges this disorder imposes is unimaginable in the more severe cases.

Homeschooled for most of his 11 years, as he and his family endured 27 surgeries just to allow him to hear and see normally, Nate and Isabelle Pullman, played respectaively by Julia (Pretty Woman) Roberts and Owen (the voice of Lightning McQueen from the Cars animated franchise and partner with Jackie Chan in the Shanghai movies) Wilson, Auggie's parents, decide to send him to a "regular" school to facilitate his adjustment to the broader outside world.

It is enormously refreshing to evaluate a movie where the parents are good, caring and kind people who love their kids and are still in love with each other. Julia Roberts plays Isabelle as a Mama Bear, protecting her cub and providing him with the security of her fierce unvarnished love. Owen Wilson’s Nate is funny, honest, affectionate and the heart of the family, whose unconditional acceptance and child like laid back approach to even the toughest of dilemmas gives Auggie a way to perceive the world with some of the sharper edges softened.

The teachers represented by Mr. Browne (Daveed Diggs) are unaffectedly quirky and portrayed as sincerely engaged with their students and genuinely interested in their students’ welfare and education. And the principal, Mr. Tushman, is a decent, reasonable, prudent man who moderates discipline and justice with understanding and kindness and is charmingly personified by by Mandy Patinkin ("Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." – Princess Bride).

Adults behave responsibly as they should and  the kids in this story act like kids – shocked they stare and ignore Auggie at first and some are even unkind, but eventually Auggie’s courage and endurance and intelligence win many of them over and he learns what it is to earn and bestow friendship.

Their surname is most telling. These are people who PULL others towards them with their open and obvious genuine familial bond, their concern for others, and their strength.

As described the movie would have been delightful, but the writers have added a layer which raises a good movie to genuine cinematographic literature .

Just when you, the audence, believe you are familiar with the characters of the movie, there is an unsignalled change of focus. Right at the point when Auggie is confronting and learning to deal with his challenges we see many of the previous events from the point of view of Olivia "Via" Pullman, (Izabela Vidovic),  Auggie’s older sister. Kind, affectionate, and ever-supportive of her hurting little brother, she understands and accepts intellectually that Auggie needs more but she feels neglected in what seems to be a secondary "also ran" position. She hides these feelings as well as her own social problems and even joys, believing her parents can not handle any more challenges or distractions.

Then we switch to Will, Auggie’s new best friend, who is seen from several points of view as he tries to peel himself from the "in" crowd which at first rejects Auggie and painfully grows to be a loyal genuine friend.

Then to Miranda, (Danielle Rose Russell), Via’s former best friend, who appears to have pulled away from her "adoptive" family over the previous vacation, but who is nursing pains of her own.

Meanwhile we get glimpses into the lives of others –

Nate Pullman, the Dad, (Owen Wilson) who seems to be the most chill member of the family – always with a gentle joke or turn of phrase to defuse a situation – but who absorbs the pain of the family because he sees the most.

Isabelle Pullman (Julia Roberts) whose fierce support and unabashed loved for her physically challenged son obscures her vision of her daughter who feels like an understudy in life.

Even the bully, Julian (Bryce Gheisar) who torments Auggie the entire movie, is eventually seen from an explanatory perspective.

And at some point, we as audience members, realize that we too, have been guilty of pigeon-holing and stereotyping the characters we have watched. No one in this movie is two dimensional or should be seen from a single angle. And we are the better for learning that lesson as we can apply that to those we come into contact.

Even Auggie, at last, must learn that despite the fact he APPEARS to have the most obvious challenges, does not make the obstacles others have to face less painful or daunting to them.

God gives us all obstacles to overcome and the strength with which to, appropriately, face them. Everyone misjudges, everyone misunderstands, even Auggie – which is OK if you learn from your mistakes. This is the lesson which Auggie, his friends and family learn from each other and teach us during the experience of this cinematic literature.

Isaiah 25:1 O LORD, You are my God; I will exalt You, I will give thanks to Your name; For You have worked WONDERS, plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness.

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.