Army Rangers, Seal Team members, and other special forces tell the stories of some of their most dangerous and exciting missions in “Live to Tell,” from producer Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “Lone Survivor”), on the History Channel. Tomorrow night’s episode is ‘Afghanistan 2005″: A quick reaction force of Army Rangers sets out on a mission to rescue the lone survivor of a SEAL team that came under attack in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Morgan Freeman’s new series for the National Geographic Channel is The Story of God, premiering April 3, 2016. Freeman, who has played God in films, has put together footage and interviews that cover all religions, cultures, and eras, even the future.
Each episode of The Story of God with Morgan Freeman is centered on a different big question about the divine:
Creation – Are there similarities among the religious creation stories from around the world? How do they compare with the scientific theory of the creation of the cosmos and the dawn of civilization? Who Is God? – How has the perception of God evolved over human history? Is God just an idea, and if so, can we find evidence of a divine presence in our brains? Evil – What is the root of evil and how has our idea of it evolved over the millennia? Is the devil real? The birth of religion may be inextricably tied to the need to control evil. Miracles – Are miracles real? For many believers, miracles are the foundation of their faith. Others regard miracles as merely unlikely events on which our brains impose divine meaning. Belief in miracles, however we define them, could be what gives us hope and drives us to turn possibility into reality. End of Days – Violent upheaval and fiery judgment fill popular imagination, but was the lore of apocalypse born out of the strife that plagued the Middle East two millennia ago? The true religious meaning of the apocalypse may not be a global war, but an inner revelation. Resurrection – How have beliefs in the afterlife developed, and how has our reaction to the afterlife changed the way we live this life? Now that science is making such rapid advances, we may soon be confronted with digital resurrection. What will that do to our beliefs?
To explore each of these topics, host and narrator Freeman went on the ground to some of humanity’s greatest religious sites, including Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, India’s Bodhi Tree, Mayan temples in Guatemala and the pyramids of Egypt. He traveled with archaeologists to uncover the long-lost religions of our ancestors, such as those at the 7500 B.C. Neolithic settlement Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He immersed himself in religious experiences and rituals all around the world, and became a test subject in scientific labs to examine how the frontiers of neuroscience are intersecting the traditional domain of religion.
The Story of God with Morgan Freeman Season 1 on DVD January 10, 2017 and Season 2 premiers on National Geographic, January 16th.
Rated R for disturbing violent content, and some graphic nudity
Profanity:
Racist language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Intense and deeply disturbing Holocaust atrocities including shooting, gas chambers, graphic images
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
January 15, 2016
Date Released to DVD:
April 25, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:
B01BZBOA30
Copyright 2015 Sony Pictures Classics
As we move past the time when there are living witnesses to the Holocaust who can tell us their stories, we need more than ever voices like first-time writer/director László Nemes to tell the stories. I know there are those who will shrug sheepishly and say that they just can’t handle another one. But each story is about a singular individual who had a singular experience. And this Oscar-winning drama is distinctively different in subject matter and in the form of storytelling. It deserves careful attention.
The Nazis took more than lives in the concentration camps. They took identities and they took souls. Saul (Géza Röhrig), the title character, is a Hungarian Jew in an unnamed extermination camp near the end of the war. Because Hungarian dictator Miklos Horthy cooperated with the Nazis but did not allow them to take the 800,000 Hungarian Jews until he could no longer prevent it in 1944 (see Walking with the Enemy), Saul has only been there a short time. Throughout the movie, the camera is close to his face or at his shoulder as he numbly tries to hold on to his life and to some sense of himself amidst the horrific slaughter and nightmarish chaos all around him. We get only glimpses.
In the very first moments, we see him standing silently as a reassuring German voice tells the new arrivals that there will be jobs and food for them, as soon as they clean off in a shower. They leave everything they brought with them, clothes, jewels, money, photos, in the outer room and then, naked, walk into the gas chamber, where they are killed.
What happens to Saul is worse than death. He is a Sonder-kommando, a prisoner forced to assist in this process, from making the new arrivals feel a little less hopeless to ransacking their belongings and removing the remains, which the Nazis will not dignify with the term “bodies.” They are called “pieces.” And he is forced to be a part of it.
Somehow, a boy, perhaps 10 or 11 years old, survives the gas chamber. He is still breathing. So he is sent to the doctor (another prisoner) to be killed and autopsied, to help make the killing process more efficient.
And that is Saul’s breaking point. He becomes convinced that the boy is his son, though it appears likely he never had a child. This may be manifestation of trauma-induced delusion, or it may be an adaptive mechanism to restore his shattered sense of the world. He knows he cannot save this both in life. But perhaps in death he can do one kindness and provide the boy with a religious burial, away from the discarded “pieces.” Increasingly desperate, contrary to his previous flat affect, Saul seeks a rabbi who can say the mourner’s prayer over the boy. Throughout the film, we see quick glimpses of the ways other prisoners hold on to some tiny element of control. For some, it may be keeping a record. For Saul, who seems to see very little of what is going on around him, it is giving a boy a better death.
This insistence on a sacred burial at any cost is a direct link to Sophocles’ 442 BC play Antigone, the final chapter in the Oedipus trilogy. Three thousand years of human history later, and someone is still finding meaning by refusing to make one final compromise.
Parents should know that this is a Holocaust movie with scenes of Nazi brutality and disturbing themes and images including gas chambers, shooting, suffocation, and dead bodies, some nude.
Family discussion: How does the style of this film help to convey the experience of the concentration camp? Why was this boy so important to Saul? What were the special issues faced by the Sonder-kommandos and the doctor?
If you like this, try: “Conspiracy,” “Schindler’s List,” and “Labyrinth of Lies”
“Norm of the North” is not awful, but it is also not special, not new, not funny, and not that interesting. The script is over-plotted but under-written, with confusing detours and uneven tone. It’s as though instead of coming up with an actual story the writers tried to assemble a formula from successful animated films — Cute sidekicks! Potty humor! Evil developers who want to despoil pristine environments! Random musical number! Wise advisor! A hero who is a clumsy outsider with a lot of heart! And a rescue! However, it also includes weirdly off-key or unresolved elements. There are actual stories to be told about the damage to the arctic environment and the potential for kids to make a difference in real life, but we’re going with condo developers and corrupt officials as the bad guys? And the issue of hunting other animal characters for food is clumsily handled. Kids may be reassured that Norm does not kill the sea lions, but he is not a vegetarian.
There are a couple of funny lines, but most of the wit of the movie is at the level of “I put the soul in winter soulstice!” “Who needs a bear with too much care and not enough scare?” Plus macho posturing, extended peeing into a fish tank, and a Nancy Pelosi “joke.”
Norm (Rob Schneider, who is quite good in his best-ever movie role) is a kind-hearted polar bear from the arctic who does not fit in because he is a poor hunter and not like the others. Both of these qualities relate to his ability to understand and speak “human” — meaning English. His wise and loving grandfather (Colm Meaney) has the same gift.
Norm’s arctic home is a popular site for tourists, and the animals appreciate tourism as it helps keep their home safe. If tourists want to come see the natural environment, then it will have to be kept as it is. But there is a developer named Mr. Greene (Ken Jeong) and we know he’s a bad guy because he has a dinky ponytail and yells a lot — and, of course, because he is a developer, who wants to build luxury homes for one-percenters on the polar icecap. Norm stows away on Mr. Greene’s company plane to come to the big city and stop the development. Accompanying him are three little arctic lemmings, whose primary characteristics are un-crushable resilience and public bodily functions.
Mr. Greene has a head of marketing, a single mom named Vera (Heather Graham). She is not entirely sure that the development is a good idea, but she desperately wants her daughter to get into a private school for gifted children, and Mr. Greene, as a graduate of the school, has promised an all-important recommendation if the development deal goes through. (The fact that the school produced a nutty crook like Mr. Greene does not cause her to question the school’s indispensability for her daughter.) It is a shame to hear the wonderful actress Salome Jens very briefly as a corrupt official, just there to look witchy and be bribed into approving the development.
It does not make much sense to try to explain the concept of distracting the populace with entertainment “bread and circuses” to children when the movie is a poor example of exactly that idea.
Parents should know that this film includes action-style violence and peril, a character captured and caged, chase scenes, theme of environmental destruction, corruption, mild language, and extended bodily function humor.
Family discussion: Why did Vera go along with Mr. Greene’s plan? What is the best way to protect the Arctic? How did the lemmings help Norm?
If you like this, try: the “Madagascar” movies and “Surf’s Up”
