Divergent: Does it Diverge from the Book?

Chicago is ruined, inhabited by five different factions. Abnegation strives for total selflessness.
Erudite seeks knowledge. Candor speaks only the truth. Amity aims for peace, avoiding all conflict. And the Dauntless seek to embody bravery. At the age of 16, young adults must choose the faction that they will join, leaving their families behind forever if their choice is different from their parents’. Let’s just say that at 16 I probably would have chosen anything but my parents’ choices!

Tris, who grew up in Abnegation, decides to join the Dauntless. The tests she takes to make this decision are supposed to make the choice obvious, but her tests turn up something unusual—she is Divergent, which is a fact she’s supposed to hide from everyone.

Her Dauntless initiation is violent and disturbing, but it’s also loaded with the kind of sexual tension that would have had me riveted as a teen and still keeps my attention as a middle-aged lady. However, I never have appreciated the kind of violence that characterizes the Dauntless rite of passage, a beatdown that no longer adheres to the original goals of the faction that seeks to instill courage. Instead, it breeds cruelty. And the Divergent are seen as a danger. Plus, one wonders why a futuristic society that can come up with some sort of electronic tattooing device can't find a way to make boxing gloves.

Shailene Woodley, who has demonstrated her acting chops in The Descendants and The Spectacular Now, plays Tris. Theo James takes on the part of the complex and conflicted hottie named Four, Tris’s instructor and possible love interest. They are great; they are just better than the movie itself. And I can't wait to see Woodley in The Fault in Our Stars later this year.

The heroes of Divergent are defined by one characteristic, a situation with which a few of them are discontent. They long to be more. But they have been reared to believe that the ultimate goal is to embody one characteristic. Which gets complicated when you start feeling compassion toward a rival, or when you are willing to bravely sacrifice yourself for someone you love.

The author, Veronica Roth, has mentioned on her blog that she started writing Tris’s character as a way to combat her own anxiety, a way to be brave and take control. This is certainly a theme that would resonate with any teen.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t do justice to the book. Even my 15-year-old daughter, a Divergent fan, thought that it was basically just a typical action movie. I don’t think her opinion was shared by all of the opening-night crowd, which cheered at many violent moments in the film. And then there was the older woman behind me, who at a particularly violent moment, exclaimed her discomfort with the events.

Divergent the movie has lost track of the soul of the books they are based on—Tris’s innocence, the desire to be more than what they have chosen, and the relationship that is more than just the sexual tension. The movie version of Divergent is less challenging and less interesting than the book from which it arose, leaving the film a bit hollow, like the factions themselves.

Miyazaki's Rising Wind

Last week I took 4 Miyazaki nerds to see his latest movie, The Wind Rises. What is a Miyazaki nerd, you may ask? Well, you obviously don’t live in my house.

Two and a half Miyazaki nerds live in my house. The ‘half’ is the youngest child, who might not have been such a nerd if not influenced by the two older siblings. What is a Miyazaki? Well.

Hayao Miyazaki is a legend of Japanese animation. He has made many, many movies, and a good number of them have become known to American audiences (Ponyo, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky to name a few). And my kids happen to love them.

So, when they heard that he was retiring, and The Wind Rises was going to be his last film, the older two couldn’t wait to see it. And it was worth the wait, even though he seems to have once again retracted his desire to retire.

The Wind Rises is based on the life of Jiro Hirokoshi, a Japanese airplane designer. In the movie, he came of age just after World War I, dreaming of the beautiful machines he could design. He dreamed, literally, of meeting his hero, Italian plane designer Giovanni Caproni, who encouraged him to follow his dreams.

If you’ve seen any of Miyazaki’s other movies, you know there is always a whimsical and mystical quality to them. Even as he carries out a biographical movie, Jiro’s dreams allow for the magical element.

At the same time, Miyazaki gives us an epic historical movie of Japan, illustrating the great earthquake that hit Tokyo and the surrounding area, as well as the effects of poverty and war.

And then there is the romance, which I think affected the young viewers who accompanied me as much as anything. It is a sweet and melancholy romance, marked by devotion and tragedy.

In case you see the title Ponyo and think you should bring your young child to see this film, please don’t. It deals with war and devastation and illness. On top of that is some of the most attractive smoking I’ve ever seen in a movie. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to smoke this much since the days of candy cigarettes, when my friends and I practiced how cool we would look if we actually could stand to smoke a cigarette.

Here’s the thing. Jiro’s primetime of life occurred in the time between World War I and World War II. We don’t get to choose the time period in which we exist. And all Jiro wanted to do was design airplanes. In Japan, at that time, the only group producing planes was the military. Which means that all his beautiful dreams were funneled into producing bombers that resulted in a lot of devastation during World War II. Are we responsible to use our gifts in ethical and morally responsible ways?

Since Miyazaki seems to portray Jiro as an alter-ego to himself, making “beautiful things”, it feels like he leaves Jiro off the hook for this ethical and moral dilemma. The movie presents a beautiful, moving opportunity to talk about what that means.

The refrain of the movie comes from a poem by French poet Valéry: “the wind is rising, we must try to live.” This echoes the experience of the main characters who, like us, are stuck in a very particular place and time, and they must make the most of it.

Son of God and the Pitfalls of Biblical Moviemaking

I will admit to going into this one a bit wary. I’m always ready to cringe when anyone brings a Bible story to life. It’s so easy for these movies turn a vast, extraordinarily complex story, shot through with both light and darkness, into something with poor production values and a smarmy feel to it. I’ve heard The Passion of the Christ is good filmmaking, but the reports of flying flesh during flogging scenes have kept away from it. Violence is probably the thing I tolerate least in movies.

But I went to Son of God anyway. And in some ways, my fears were realized. There were some poor production values. The chief problem is the pace. The first part of the movies whizzes you through the highlights reel of the Old Testament, then the birth and life of Christ get a bit more airtime. From the Last Supper on, it slows down to a crawl. At the end there are lots of close ups of agonized and emotional people in slow motion, and the music plays on loudly. It reminded me of a critic who complained that the movie War Horse had too much “inspirational plowing.”

Also, as I had mentioned to the Friday Noon Movie Club, there is the problem of Jesus. He still looks way too much like the traditional Western image of him. In fact, he looks like Brad Pitt with some smudges on his face. I liked the actors who played John and Peter, and they looked like they might actually be from that time and place. I’ve nothing against the appealing Diogo Morgado who portrays Christ, but he does not appear to be from the pre-orthodontia phase of the world, which becomes quite obvious as he’s reduced to smiling spiritually much of the time. I wanted to see him righteously angry when he turned the tables over in the temple, but Morgado couldn’t quite summon up that kind of strength.

Personally, I think that filmmakers often fail at this because we just don’t know the man Christ well enough. We know enough to model our lives after him as best we can, but as has often been pointed out, it’s not so simple to decide things based on What Would Jesus Do. He was a mystery, and he was God. Even the disciples wondered what he was talking about half the time.

All that said, there were a few things I took away from this film.

First, though the character of Pontius Pilate comes off ridiculously at the beginning, in the end I appreciated some aspects of his characterization. The film makes clear the kind of politics he is dealing with. He allows his concerns for himself and his position to overtake his desire to do the right thing. At the end, as he tells his wife that it’s no matter, that this won’t mean anything, you see a person who is on the way to convincing himself that he is right. The Bible often mentions someone’s heart being hardened, which I’ve always wondered about. This gave me a glimpse of what that might actually look like.

Second, while I wished for more stellar cinematography (see the IMAX movie Jerusalem if you really want to have this old city take your breath away), I still felt like a got a feeling of what life was like then. Particularly what it means to journey from one place to another on foot in the arid land.

And, of course, I was reminded again of just what Christ’s sacrifice really was. I’m a very story-driven person, which is why movies appeal to me so much in the first place. A fleshed-out version of these events brings me a fresh reminder of what is so easily glossed over as I speak the words of the Apostles’ Creed.

And so, don’t go to this for great moviemaking. But if you want a taste of the land, or the life, or how some miracles might have looked, or most of all a fresh reminder of what price Christ paid, it might be worth your time.