BEFORE: Today is Friday the 13th, which has a reputation for being unlucky, or for some people it's a justification to watch or program slasher films. Well, I save my horror films for October, so call me crazy, but the 13th is just another day - by my reckoning it should fall on a Friday about 1/7 of the time, and it's a big fuss over nothing.
It's also the final Manhattanhenge of 2018, that's one of two times each year where the setting sun aligns with the east-west numbered streets of Manhattan, so if you stand on a wide cross-street, like 14th or 42nd, and avoid getting run over, you can get a great view of the sun setting over New Jersey, right between the tall buildings of Manhattan. I went out to see it four years ago, and caught some great pictures from Times Square, I think this time I'll try a different street, and move further east, which some people say creates a more dramatic effect. I'll explain my reasons later for bringing these things up before watching THIS particular movie.
Now, I do own a copy of the book "The Shack", but it's been residing on the heater in my bedroom for several years - I must have started it at some point, realized it was a bunch of religious claptrap, and never picked it up again. Watching the movie version tonight will at least save me some time, now I'll never need to finish reading it.
Octavia Spencer carries over from "Fruitvale Station".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Collateral Beauty" (Movie #2,899)
THE PLOT: A grieving man receives a mysterious, personal invitation to meet with God at a place called "The Shack".
AFTER: It's a tough film to get through, if you're an agnostic/skeptic like I am. I eased my way out of the Catholic religion in my late teens, occasionally went to a Presbyterian church when I was married the first time, but by my late twenties, I was out again. The reason I brought up Friday the 13th and Manhattanhenge earlier is that they both represent perfectly natural phenomenons that people have attached some weird mystical meanings to, and the science-based explanations are more simple, yet less widespread.
If anything bad happens to you on Friday the 13th, you may of course draw a conclusion that this happened to you because of bad luck, bad mojo, whatever. But if that SAME thing happened to you on Thursday the 12th, or Saturday the 14th, you wouldn't even try to make any connection, you'd just say, "Well, a bad thing happened," and that would be it. Similarly with the sun setting at a particular angle with reference to Manhattan architecture, if someone discovered this thousands of years from now, after the Hunger Games/Apocalypse/Dinosaur take-over, they might try to attribute some meaning to the alignment. But simple science tells us that because of the tilt in the Earth's axis, combined with the planet's revolution around the sun, the sun is going to set in a slightly different spot on the horizon each night, and then after the summer solstice, it's going to start edging back the other way. So for two of those nights, it's going to set in a particular spot, and then line up.
The problem is, human culture placed certain meanings on things years ago, and even though we know more than humans from thousands of years ago, our culture and our language has not caught up. We still say "the sun rises" and "the sun sets" when of course it does no such thing - the sun is staying in the same place, relative to our solar system, and the earth is turning, creating the illusion that the sun is moving across the sky, and then sinking below the horizon. We don't FEEL the earth moving, but we can SEE the sun moving, so that's what we call it - but instead "the sun is setting" we should say "the earth is turning, moving me into shadow".
And that's how I feel about religion - people looking for answers to things they didn't quite understand made up stories to fill in the gaps, based on what they saw or experienced, and those stories are still with us, even though modern science can offer very little proof that they happened. Was Jesus alive, did he die on the cross, did he rise again? Well, that's what the stories say, but there's not one bit of hard evidence for any of that. The Bible is filled with great stories like that, but they were all written for the purposes of creating a society (and for some entertainment value) in order to convince people to behave a certain way. Somebody obviously felt that the world would be a better place with less theft and murders in it, so they created an afterlife with a points-based reward system to shame people into not robbing and killing so much.
And then these modern novelists and screenwriters try to build on the mythologies that came before, only they're convinced they can do it better, they can mix it up and change it around and make it more appealing to today's audiences, but really, it's the height of arrogance to say, "This is the way that life and death works, I've just decided." Well, what if I choose to believe otherwise, or perhaps think for myself? Look, if you want to create a galaxy far, far away and tell me how the Force works, that's one thing, but you're messing with people's LIVES here. How many people don't get out and live their best life because they're focused on the next life instead of this one? And then what if THIS one turns out to be all you get?
This story is very cagey, though - the lead character, Mack, slips on the ice early on and hits his head. So, then everything he experiences at the Shack could be in his own imagination, obviously. And so therefore his subconscious is telling him what he needs to hear, in order to heal - that God forgives everyone, even the bad people, and he should too. I like the codicil, however, that he can still stay MAD at the person who took his daughter from him, but he has to learn to forgive him. That's a very fine legal distinction, but perhaps it is an important part of the grieving process. Even if he could take God out of the equation, which I don't think he's capable of doing, that idea could still have some merit. But it's buried under SO much religious B.S.
We're supposed to believe after the "Wisdom" character posits her points - like "How do you decide which one of your kids goes to heaven, and which one goes to hell?" (This is like a religious version of that party game, the one that asks you if you'd rather fight a duck the size of a horse, or a hundred horses the size of a duck...). Sure, God's got a tough row to hoe - but wait, I thought God was all powerful, so this contradicts that. Why can't God determine some kind of eternal punishment-based system that is also easy for him to manage? Why does it need to be difficult for him/her?
The answer, of course, to that question - and other ones like "Why does God allow there to BE bad people?" is that they all presume the existence of God in the first place. When you take that part out, you're left with "Why are there bad people?" which is a much easier question to answer - they benefit from the things they do, or they were damaged somehow and this is their way of dealing with it, or they never learned to be good. See? Easy-peasy.
But hey, keep on believing that God lives in a shack with his/her other two personas, and they make dinners and weed gardens and do other things that are probably all metaphors and lessons, in that preachy God way. (And it keeps bouncing between winter and spring, because heaven has no respect for continuity whatsoever.) God can't even make you a salad, apparently, without driving home some point about sin or how much she loves you. Especially you, God needs your love and faith so much that she can't even see that if she loves EVERYONE in a special way, then that's not really special, is it? It's like when Alex Trebek wishes "Good luck" to all three contestants at the start of Jeopardy! - it negates itself and therefore becomes meaningless.
NITPICK POINT: Mack takes the fact that there are no footprints in the snow around the mailbox as "proof" that the letter came from God. What a crock. First of all, it contradicts that parable about walking on the beach with Jesus (because even the Lord leaves footprints, duh) and it couldn't possibly be that someone put the letter in the mailbox, walked away, and THEN it started to snow, could it? Or that after they walked away it snowed very hard, and that new snow covered up their prints? Give me a freakin' break.
Also starring Sam Worthington (last seen in "Hacksaw Ridge"), Radha Mitchell (last seen in "Olympus Has Fallen"), Tim McGraw (last seen in "Tomorrowland"), Graham Greene (last seen in "Maverick"), Avraham Aviv Alush, Sumire Matsubara, Alice Braga (last seen in "On the Road"), Megan Charpentier, Gage Munroe (last seen in "Immortals"), Amélie Eve, Ryan Robbins (last seen in "Warcraft"), Jordyn Ashley Olson, Derek Hamilton, Tanya Hubbard, Carson Reaume, Lane Edwards, Kendall Cross, Chris Britton, Jay Brazeau, Ty Olsson
RATING: 3 out of 10 life-jackets
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