Tuesday, June 12, 2007

A look at a film and other stories

Julie gets the movie Knocked Up "egg-zactly" right in her post Knocked Up: Knock it off!. Given all the positive buzz surrounding this movie, I think a review from an intelligent moviegoer is all the more necessary, which is also why, from The "Looking Closer" Journal", a few more are needed. Hence, Two Reviews of "Knocked Up" from Looking Closer readers.

Today is our fourteenth wedding anniversary! Frankly, I don't know how she's done it, which makes me all the more grateful.

Getting back to stories, those written, those conveyed through the medium of film, and the stories of our lives, plus, working to maintain the eclectic nature of this post here is Flannery on story and mystery:

"We Catholics are very much given to the Instant Answer. Fiction doesn't have any. It leaves us, like Job, with a renewed sense of mystery. St. Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. This is what the fiction writer, on his lesser level, hopes to do. The danger for the writer who is spurred by a religious view of the world is that he will consider this to be two operations instead of one. He will try to enshrine mystery without the fact, and there will follow further separations inimical to art. Judgment will be separated from vision, nature from grace, and reason from imagination."

Mysteries and Manners pg 184 & 151 respectively.

Also, in light of Knocked Up the stories we tell matter, but more important still, building on O'Connor's observation, is how tell our stories.

3 comments:

  1. Scott,

    Congratulations on you Wedding Anniversary! Fourteen years. Awesome!

    Tami

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is true, sometimes our stories, if told in the right "light" can be looked upon with humor, at least down the road a ways. I found this was the case with my 83 year old dear Grandmother, just hours before her death as I reminisced with her about my life. I said, (this was ten years into marriage) "Grandma, I know we're supposed to fall in love, get married and have children, but, (hubby) and did it just exactly backwards. We had a child, got married and fell in love!" Somehow this struck the funny bone of dear Grandma (either that, or the foot massage I was giving her became a tickle massage, but I'm pretty sure it was the story). I always remember her giggling over my story. This saintly woman who I believe possibly never broke a commandment in her life could find some humor in the fact that we are, after all, human, and some of us are far from perfect. Even though she was as close to perfect as anyone I have ever known.

    With that said, I have no desire to see the movie "Knocked Up". The title alone enough to keep me from going.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As my friend's Gran, who was a nurse, used to say "The first child can come at any time, the rest take nine months!"

    Thanks for your wonderful story!

    ReplyDelete

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