Reflections on Oscar Nominations for 2013

Well, the list of Oscar nominations has been released, and now the Oscar buzz really begins. As usual, I was happy and disappointed by the choices. Happy that so many good films are being recognized. Disappointed that such a good one as Lee Daniels’ The Butler didn’t make the cut for “Best Picture,” or that the Saudi Arabian Wadjda and British-South African Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom were not honored. I suspect that we still are living in a time when the inclusion of a “black” film is a token gesture, so that there is room for just one such film on the list.

The Academy’s list differs greatly from my Top Ten List for Visual Parables because their criteria are centered more on aesthetics and box office success than spiritual or moral content. To see the list and also reviews of the various films available on visualparables.org click onto the title.

Best Picture

It is good that so many films are again included, though I wish that there were the full possible contingent of 10 so as to include either the Coen Brothers’ wonderful Inside Llewyn Davis or Lee Daniels’ The Butler. Despite the quality of such films as American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street, I don’t think either is equal to the two omitted films.

American Hustle

David O. Russell’s “based on a true story” film features some wonderful performances, but the subject of the rise and fall of scam artists isn’t nearly as important as that of several of the other films on the list.

Captain Phillips

This is a good parable of courage and resourcefulness, with another fine performance by Tom Hanks. Another plus factor is the all too brief depiction of the plight of the Somali peasants who are forced by world economic circumstances beyond their control (or understanding) to choose between starving or stealing. I find it remarkable that the Academy members seem to understand this by nominating the nonprofessional Barkhad Abdi for a “Best Supporting Actor” award for his excellent performance as the pirate leader.

Dallas Buyers Club

It is no surprise that Matthew McConaughey was nominated as “Best Actor” in this character transformation film. We move from intense disapproval of his philandering, gay bashing, and drug ingesting early in the film to a grudging admiration for the way he emerges from total self-absorption to championing the underdog gay community later on. That the film is based on a “true story” makes it even moe compelling.

  

Gravity

Technically perhaps the most complicated of the films, and aesthetically perhaps the most beautiful, this tale of pluck and survival certainly deserves to be on the list, even though I did not include it on Visual Parables Top Ten list. Beyond the mere technical aspect is Sandra Bullock’s great performance as the heroine for whom our daughters can look up to.

Her

Spike Jonze’s truly great film cautionary film about our relationship to our digital devices and r relationship to each other bumped the wonderful Wadjda from the Top Ten list for Presbyterian News Service because of its late arrival in the Cincinnati area. The last shot of the two friends sitting together on the roof of their apartment building is the perfect ending, designed to make us think about how we are involved with social media and friends and neighbors.

Nebraska

This reversal of the Prodigal Son parable confirms that Alexander Payne is one of the best directors in Hollywood. Seldom has unconditional love been presented as effectively as in what the son does for his father through the course of their trip from Montana to Nebraska and back.

Philomena

Both a social problem film (the mistreatment of out of wedlock mothers by the Irish Catholic Church) and a personal memoir, this is a moving story of a woman of faith so strong that she can forgive the nuns who sorely abused her 50 years earlier.

The Wolf of Wall Street

I think this “true story” is way too over the top to be on this list, as entertaining as it is. It is the name of its director Martin Scorsese and the performances of Leonardo De Caprio and Jonah Hill that swayed the Academy voters to nominate the film.

12 Years a Slave

This is my favorite candidate both because of the light it sheds on our dark past and the skill of  director Steve McQueen and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s truly magnificent performance as the runaway who moves from total despair to acceptance to hope. I believe that it would be good for the country if this film were so honored, hopefully convincing more people to go and see it. Already the possibility of it being nominated has moved the studio to re-release it. I hope those who have seen the film will talk it up, maybe organizing a discussion group to explore the film’s relevance for today.

Best Actor

I am torn between three of the excellent nominees.

Christian Bale, American Hustle

Very good as a guy who scams the gullible, yet who still has a touch of decency so that he tries to protect a good-hearted politician who unwisely attempts to use underhanded means to achieve public good.

Bruce Dern, Nebraska

This may be the last chance that this fine second tier actor for this award, so I would be happy if it he is chosen, even though my favorite is the star of 12 Years a Slave.

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street

One of our finest actors, but I think this should not be his year in a film that is not as important as some others.

Matthew McConaughy, Dallas Buyers Club

He is deserving of the title because of the incredible preparation involving weight loss, as well as his on-screen performance. He convincingly moves us from repulsion to acceptance.

Chiwetel Ojiofor, 12 Years a Slave

Both because of the importance of the film and because of his on-screen performance, I hope he wins. When I watched that scene at the slave cemetery wherein we see his face change from despair to hope as his friends sang “Roll, Jordan Roll,” I felt that he had at least a nomination clenched, if not the award itself.

Best Actress

Amy Adams, American Hustle

A wonderful performance, but…

Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

It is good to see Woody Allen back in great form, as well as Ms. Blanchett’s fine performance as a woman who is her own worst enemy.

Sandra Bullock, Gravity

A very good performance to place along the one in Blindside.

Judi Dench, Philomena

My favorite to win because of the importance of the film’s theme of discovery and forgiveness, as well as her delightful performance.

Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

Still another great performance by this phenomenal actress, I would not be too disappointed if she noses out Ms. Dench. What a portrait of a woman so shaped by her own sad childhood that she is making everyone else as miserable as herself!

This probably enough for now, though I do want to add that I have seen but one of the foreign films nominated--part of the penalty for living in “fly over country” is that we often are weeks or months late in seeing films available much earlier on the West and East coasts. Still, because of the great way that the themes of unjust persecution and reconciliation are tied in with the celebration of the Nativity, I am rooting for The Hunt.

Other nominations worth thinking about, but not now:

Best Supporting Actor

Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips

Bradley Cooper, American Hustle

Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave

Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street

Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Best supporting actress

Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine

Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle

Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave

Julia Roberts, August: Osage County

June Squibb, Nebraska

Best director

Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity

Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave

Alexander Payne, Nebraska

David O. Russell, American Hustle

Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Foreign Film  The Hunt, Denmark

More on Nelson Mandela

This is the second of what will be three posts on Nelson Mandela. I know, there has been so much on him, but there is so much good material available, that I hope you are not tired of hearing about him. This time I want to bring to your attention in case you are like me and missed the PBS "Front Line" 2 hour special on the leader "The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela":

It's available in its entirety at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/ . I don't know how long PBS will make this accessible, so I suggest that you go and watch it soon,

The documentary begins with his youthful rebellion against his tribal chief  and on through his early days as a student and then an activist after meeting and coming under the influence of Walter Sisulu and on through his incarceration, release, sad divorce from Winnie, and his remarriage during his presidency. Along with the video you can also read material below it about aspects of his life. Embedded in these are some short videos. Quite a treasure trove of information!

One glaring omission, however--at least in what I've read thus far--is any discussion of the man in the ANC who opposed Mandela's resorting to violence, Chief Albert Luthuli, then the head of the ANC. Nor have I heard or seen him mentioned in the many other TV/cable tributes to Mandela. This is a glaring omission in that Chief Luthuli received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 for his advocacy of non-violence against the apartheid regime and his persecution and imprisonment by the authorities. He was the first non-Euroean or American to be so honored, quite a precdent for that time. More on him next time.

I also will be bringing to your attention a DVD that I discovered I had bought a long time ago--one of almost 60 that I knew nothing about but which was appealing, either because of subject matter or their actors or director. This one is The Color of Freedom, the story of a racist guard who watched over Mandela for 20 years and moved from racist to admirer. It stars Joseph Fiennes as the guard and Dennis Haysbert  as Mandela. I tried to find out about it at the Imdb, but there was no listing, something very puzzling, that site suposedly having every film ever released in its databank.

Then good old Google came to the rescue by revealing that it was known elsewhere as Goodbye Bafana. I plan on seeing this tonight, so will include it in the next posting, as well as reviewing it for Visual Parables at visualparables.org. I don't know whether this is the same person featured in the about to be released Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. We shall see,

Also one of the issues I want to raise in the third installment is Nelson Mandela's giving up on non-violence, as I believe this was a sad mistake that set back the cause of South African freedom rather than advancing it.

Nelson Mandela

It has been too long since writing on this site, so now, while the last night's news of Nelson Mandela's death is fresh, I am impelled to respond to this world event. Like many of you, I was glued to my TV set last night, soaking in all the well-produced tributes on ABC and MSNBC. Even though I have followed his career for a long time--as one involved in civil rights, how could I not?--I learned a lot of new facts, such as his learning Afrikaans while in prison so that he could speak his enemy's language when the day would come, as he always believed it would, that he was freed. There was a quote from him to the effect that when you speak to a person you connect with his mind, but when you speak in his native language, you speak to his heart.

The timing of his death--am so thankful that he was able to live to a ripe old age, unlike some of his colleagues such as Steve Biko--is interesting. The film I am most anticipating this month is MANDELA: Long Road to Freedom. I heard last night that the film was being premiered in London, with the crown Prince and other dignitaries present. At the end of the film the actor starring as Mandela, Idris Elba, came out from behind the screen and told the audience that Mandela had just died. He and the Prince then paid tribute to the great man.

Click on the images for more info..

I have seen two other films centering on the leader, INVICTUS and MANDELA & DeKlerk. The first starred Morgan Freeman as Mandela. He himself was chosen by Mandela to play the role, and Freeman in turn chose the film director with whom he had enjoyed a close working relationship, Clint Eastwood. It is a marvelous film illustrating all of the comments being made about him concerning his eschewing retaliation and stressing reconciliation. You can see my review of it by going to visualparables.org and clicking onto its title in the Film Index. The title, you may recall, came from Mandela's favorite poem about maintaining control over one's inner self ("I am the captain of my soul") which helped him endure those long tough years as a prisoner at hard labor on Robben Island.

                                        

The second was a TV film aired in 1997 starring the great Sidney Poittier as Mandela and Michael Caine as the last apartheid era president. As the title indicates, it dramatizes the story of how the white president decided to contact his most famous prisoner and negotiate his release.

Those involved in civil rights in this country have long felt connected with the South African freedom movement. In my own case as a high school student it was the far away scourge of apartheid that made me more aware of the situation in our own country. Recommended by adults, Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country, a novel about a priest searching for his lost son, moved me deeply, as did Zoltan Korda's 1951 film adaptation. There is a later film version, also very good in that it stars James Earl Jones and Richard Harris as the two grief-stricken fathers. Through the years I have referred to the novel and film in my sermons and discussion groups.

     

            

I loved the interview last night in which Congressman John Lewis, once one of Dr. King's  brilliant young assistants spoke of his meeting Mandela for the first time and telling him how he and the struggle of fellow South Africans had inspired him during his own struggle for equality in America. Mandela told him that he knew him and his work for freedom. something that surprised and humbled the Congressman.

Back to Alan Paton and his novel--he was exiled and his book banned in his native country--but almost as soon as the novel was published it was adapted for the Broadway musical stage by Maxwell Anderson, with the composer Kurt Weil creating the music. I discovered this during my college years and listened to it often, it becoming one of my favorite record albums thanks to Weil's haunting music and Anderson's retaining so much of the poetic language of Paton's novel.

The album is now available digitally from Amazon, well worth the asking price of $9.99. Go there, and you can listen to a few opening measures of the songs. 

This album figures in my only direct connection with South Africa, an event that took place in the 1980s when I pastored a church in Westfield, New York. Located a mile inland from Lake Erie, you might expect this little upstate New York town, known only as the home of the Welch Grape Juice Company, to be so isolated that nothing so far away as South Africa could touch it. However, this was not the case, because busy I-90 and US Route 20 that connected it with Erie and Buffalo the world was easily brought to the village. A year or two earlier a group of Japanese and American Buddhist nuns and monks walked along that route on their Peace March across America, and our people agreed to house them for the night. (What a dinner and discussion we had that night, but that is another story.) 

Our Presbytery, wishing to keep its member churches informed on world issues, and South Africa in particular, invited a team of South Africans to visit and speak at the churches. The South African who spoke to us and stayed the night was Willy (I am ashamed that I cannot recall his last name!). Director of a social service center for blacks, Willy described the terrible pass system, the brutal arrests, beatings and killings, and expressed the fear that his own teenaged children no longer believed in nonviolence as the means for change. Thus he feared for the future of his country, something stressed in Paton's novel when a black priest observes in words to the effect, "I fear that when they have turned to loving, we will have turned to hating." Willy's report was an interesting contrast to the glowing report of conditions in South Africa that the son of one of our conservative members gave after being a guest of a white organization that sponsored a student tour--never taking them to a township or allowing them to talk with black dissidents.

After the dinner meeting I asked Willy if he knew of LOST IN THE STARS, and he replied that he certainly knew of Alan Paton and his novel, but had not heard of the play. After hearing some of it, he was eager to take back the tape I made for him, planning to smuggle it in with his personal suitcase so he could use it in his work of encouraging his oppressed people. It would have been confiscated and he would be in trouble if the customs agent had been aware of the cassett's contents. Because I never heard again from Willy I have often wondered if it did get through and if he was able to play it.

Well this enough for now. Perhaps more later, especially when MANDELA opens here in Cincinnati. Actually, this might not be enough: for a wealth of material on Mandela go to ReadtheSpirit . Plenty of photos, interviews, and articles there!

    

                           

  

Two New NOTHING SACRED Guides

Two new guides for the TV series Nothing Sacred have been posted on the Fuller Theological Seminary media blog "Reel Spirituality." Episode 3 "Mixed Blessings" deals with unexpected consequences from the staff's winning lottery ticket, and Episode 4 "Parents and Children" deals with both sides of the abortion controversy when a staff member is impregnated.

Both episodes are taken from You Tube postings, but you do not have to go to another site, just click onto the pictures to sart watching. I started this series of guides because there are so many ethical and theological issues in each episode that could challenge a group of believers to stretch and exercise their thinking faith. Episode 3 includes 12 questions, one of them being a link to the words and a concert performance of the beautiful sacred song that figures so prominently in this story, "Panis Angelica." Episode 4 includes 10 discussion questions.

Next month we will be posting two more episodes. If you use these materials, please let us know, as this would be an encouraging note that someone "out there" is paying heed. To access the blog go to:
http://www.brehmcenter.com/initiatives/reelspirituality/film/articles/show/contributors/ed-mcnulty/

New VISUAL PARABLES Launch

I am happy that ReadtheSpirit has launched the new Visual Parables site. There are lots of features to explore which will add to the fun of viewing movies through the eyes of faith and ethics.

Check it out at http://www.visualparables.org

To the Wonder

 Rated R. Our ratings: V-1; L- 1; S/N -5. Running time: 1 hour 52 min.
Related Scriptures: Psalm 42:1-2; Song of Solomon 8:6-7; Matthew 5:43-44; Mark 9.24.



 From the very beginning we see that this highly unusual film will be more of a visual meditation than the ordinary story-based film. As it opens we hear a woman’s voice musing, accompanied by a montage of shots,  “Newborn. I open my eyes. I melt. Into the eternal night. A spark. You brought me out of the shadows. You lifted me from the ground. What is she dreaming of? How calm she is. In love. Forever at peace.” The shots show a woman and a man playfully teasing one another on a train, walking the streets of Paris while enjoying some of its monuments, lying together in a park, standing on a bridge over the Seine as a boat passes beneath them, and admiring a medieval tapestry, the camera lingering on the Lady in the tapestry as we hear “In love. Forever in peace.”

Director/writer Terence Malick’s film is a meditation on two kinds of love and the yearning or thirst that sensitive humans experience—the first love is that between Neil (Ben Affleck), traveling in France, and Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a divorced Ukrainian émigré living in Paris with her 10-year-old daughter Tatiana. This Eros love, as the Greeks called it, is juxtaposed with the agape love of Catholic priest Father Quintana (Javier Bardem). The yearning, on the one hand, is Marina’s longing for the love vouchsafed in marriage, and on the other hand the priest’s thirst for the God whose presence he cannot feel. Through much of the film he suffers the dark night of the soul akin to that which afflicted Mother Teresa.

The lovers travel to Mont St. Michel, the island abbey off the coast of Normandy, basking in the wonder of their newfound romance. As they ascend the stairs Marina comments, “We climbed the steps to the Wonder”—this is followed by their walking through a garden and the vaulted nave of the church—which apparently gives the film its title. Most of the reflections and sparse dialogue involve Marina, with Neil scarcely saying more than three lines throughout the entire movie, and the priest’s prayers and sermons. Neil seems withdrawn, unable to express himself and, worst of all, unable to make the commitment that Marina yearned for while she was gazing at a medieval tapestry in which a maiden is flanked by two unicorns.

Neil does invite her and Tatiana to return with him to Oklahoma, where mother and daughter are happy at first, Neil joining in their frolicking in one tender scene. But we see his reticence in the supermarket scene in which Tatiana runs around marveling at the abundance and cleanliness of the place, and then asking if Neil will marry her mother and become her step dad. He makes no reply. In a later brief revealing shot we see him outside their house looking in as mother and daughter dance merrily together.

Neil works as an environmental inspector for an oil company. When a number of people tell him about a pollution problem, he seems very concerned for their welfare. While wading in a stream he speaks on the phone about the lab tests confirming the pollution caused by the oil extraction, but I am not sure what he does about it, because then the scene shifts to Marina reflecting on love. For a while Marina lives off the loving relationship that was so enriched by their experience together in France, but Oklahoma is so bleak by comparison, and Neil is gone so often. Even when he is present, he is so remote.

Tatiana, unable to forge friendships at school due to her poor English, is the first to express dissatisfaction. “Something is missing,” she tells her mother. When her visa is expired, and Neil has made no marriage proposal, Marina returns to Paris where she hopes to reconnect with her former husband for the sake of Tatania. She longingly reflects that had Neil said the word, she would have stayed.

 Neil discovers an old flame, Jane (Rachel McAdams), a lonely widow who cannot manage alone the bison ranch she has inherited. But will this relationship hold up, given Neil’s withdrawnness and inability to make a commitment?

Neil’s inability to commit is underlined in a brilliant earlier scene in which he and Marina are attending mass at Father Quintana’s church, and during the homely the priest declares, “ Man is in revolt against God. The prophet Hosea saw in the breakdown of his marriage the spiritual infidelity of his own people. In that broken marriage we see the pattern of our world. We wish to live inside the safety of the laws. We fear to choose. Jesus insists on choice. The one thing he condemns utterly is avoiding the choice. To choose is to commit yourself. And to commit yourself is to run the risk, is to run the risk of failure, the risk of sin, the risk of betrayal. But Jesus can deal with all of those. Forgiveness he never denies us. The man who makes a mistake can repent. But the man who hesitates, who does nothing, who buries his talent in the earth, with him he can do nothing.” When the camera switches from the priest to Neil he appears uneasy.

The priest himself is wracked with the yearning for God, similar to that of the writer of Psalm 42. Fr. Quintana moves among his people preaching and living a faith that he himself no longer feels. Many of his parishioners are poor, and he faithfully visits them, or tries to, as some will not respond to his knocking at their doors. At a wedding which he presides over he is the unsmiling one amidst the festivities. An elderly woman says that she is praying for him to receive the gift of joy. He replies, “Me?” and she says that it is because he looks so unhappy. This is reinforced when in the nave of the church the bearded church sexton says virtually the same thing to him. As each of them places a hand on a pane of the stain glass window the old man, so filled with God that he speaks in tongues, talks of the warm spiritual light.

Much more occurs in the last half of the film, again Malick giving us just fragments of plot and dialogue, so that I felt like I was working on one of those children’s connect the dots pictures that sometimes surprised me when the full picture emerged. No filmmaker that I know and admire makes me work as much as does this enigmatic film artist. The result, however, is worth all the effort, especially the nearly last scene in which Fr. Quintana recites part of the beautiful hymn known as St. Patrick’s Breast-Plate, set to some moving visuals.

It is sad that the film could find no one willing to distribute it to theaters, but given the poor box office response of his magnificent 2011 film Tree of Life, this is understandable. Again, I thank God for DVD and streaming video for making this masterpiece available to us. The critical response has ranged from calling it “muddled” and “boring” to that of “masterful.” It might not be for you, but I urge you to sum up your patience and give it a try. But do this with several spiritually astute companions who like to discuss films: this is a film that will prove the mantra I teach at my film workshops on the need for group involvement with a film, “All of us see more than one of us.”

The full review with a set of 12 questions for reflection or discussion appears in the Sep/Oct issue of Visual Parables, which will be available on Sep. 23 when VP's new site is launched..

Closed Circuit

                       Rated R. Our ratings: V -4; L -2; S/N-3. Running time: 1 hour 36 min.

Claudia and Martin appear before the special judge, but most

of the drama takes place outside the courtroom.

(c) 2013 Focus Featues

                                           The eyes of the LORD are in every place,
                                           keeping watch on the evil and the good.
                                                             Proverbs 15:3

                                           They sit in ambush in the villages;
                                              in hiding-places they murder the innocent.
                                          Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless
                                                               Psalm 10:8

Director John Crowley and screenwriter Steven Knight demonstrate that a thriller does not have to include blazing guns, falls from great heights that do not injure, or cars making impossible maneuvers through heavy traffic and crowded sidewalk to hold the interest of the audience. (Though there are a couple of foot chases we must admit, but these do not require stunt drivers or CGI effects.) Just give us a story that is relevant and characters that are more normal than the impossible to stop heroes of the CGI-enhanced blockbusters. With all the debate over the US government’s intelligence gathering, no film is more relevant than this one, even though it is set in London and not in Washington, D.C.

The film opens with a split screen showing images from a dozen or more security cameras. We see shoppers and vendors in a large London market. We can hear snatches of the subjects’ conversations as they pass close to a camera. A white truck pulls up, and vendors call out that it cannot park there. Suddenly an explosion demolishes the place. Over a hundred bodies are found amidst the rubble. The police quickly track down the alleged perpetrator, an Arab immigrant Farroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto) entering the country from Germany.

Barrister Martin Rose (Eric Bana) is assigned to defend the man because the original lawyer had died. Because the Crown wants to protect the secret intelligence the prosecution will submit as evidence, a vetted defense lawyer, Claudia Simmons-Howe (Rebecca Hall), also has been appointed as a Special Advocate to review the classified evidence in the government's case. The two are ordered to have no communication between them that would taint the evidence. The problem is that Claudia had once been Martin’s lover, which had led to the breakup of his marriage. How will they relate in their common cause to defend their client?

Two other important figures are the Crown’s Attorney General (Jim Broadbent), who often approaches Martin with warnings about his going too far in his investigation. New York Times reporter Joanna Reece (Julia Stiles), successfully maneuvering to meet Martin at a dinner party, really sets the intrigue into motion by suggesting that the original defense lawyer did not just die, but was murdered because he learned too much about M15 and its operations.

Though this seems far-fetched at first, upon further investigation Martin learns that his client had been arrested in Germany on a drug charge. Despite this he was able to come to London with no problems. How could this happen? Also, Martin is worried because the same taxi keeps showing up when he needs a ride. Hmmmm. The intrigue becomes more complex as the trial at Old Bailey proceeds and a special M15 and Farroukh’s teenaged son Emir are brought into the case.

Interspersed throughout the film are shots of clusters of surveillance cameras and then a screen full of multiple images of people going about their business. Often we see Martin and Claudia in them, so we, and they, know that they are under constant surveillance. With M15 brought under suspicion, the film reminded me of Three Days of the Condor, the 1975 film which was one of the first to portray the CIA as a dark force that could be as evil as the Soviet menace from which it was supposed to be protecting us. That film’s conclusion pinned the hero’s hope for justice on the New York Times’ using the documentation he is shown delivering to it in the last shot. But what if M15 can stop such a transaction “by any means necessary”?

Throughout the film I felt a chill or sense of creepiness each time the cameras and their images were displayed on the screen. The nagging question kept arising, in this world so dangerous that we need to have someone constantly watching for possible terrorists, “Who is watching the watchers?” For the author of Proverbs it was a comfort to believe that “the eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” The Lord can be trusted to look out for our good, but how much trust can we place in those humans watching over us? What if the words from the 10th Psalm apply to them?

For Reflection/Discussion
There are several spoilers later on in these questions!
1. How does this thriller compare to the normal summer blockbuster thriller? Why is this one far more believable?
2. How did you feel during the many shots of security cameras and their images? Where do you see them during your normal day? In stores; government buildings; at traffic intersections; in your own home?
3. In a dangerous world, in order to protect democracy, which do you think most people will choose—security or freedom and privacy? What are the arguments for each side? What do you know of the “Red scare” after WW 1; the “witch hunts” of the McCarthy era; the mood of the country right after the US invasion of Iraq when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the war? (For more on the Dixie Chicks see http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/destroying-the-dixie-chicks-ten-years-after)
4. Though set in London what relevance do you see the film has for the US?
5. What do you think has caused novelists and filmmakers to change, beginning in the 60s, from depicting the CIA and similar foreign intelligence agencies as good and heroic to an agency capable of evil doing? (Another current example is 2 Guns, a thriller in which Naval Intelligence and the CIA are both depicted as unsavory.) What danger in a democracy do you see in entrusting secrecy and great power (and funding) to a government agency with almost no accountability?
6. Three Days of the Condor, especially at its conclusion, saw hope in the battle against government secrecy and corruption in the power of a free press to get the word out to the public. How is this hope quashed in this new film? Were you surprised by the fate of the NYT reporter?
7. How do Martin and Claudia depart from the usual path of the screen hero up against an opponent of immense power? How is their admission of defeat more realistic? And yet how is their resolve to protect the life of young Emir evidence that they have not totally given in?
8. What do you think of the newscast you hear at the end of the film? How is this necessary for this film to avoid being nihilistic or cynical about the issue of great misuse of power? Do you share the filmmaker’s apparent belief that the truth will finally emerge in a democracy, despite attempts to cover up such a major mistake as was made by M15? Note how the psalmist shares the belief that right will win out eventually, especially in Psalms 37 and 73.