Claudia Fontes (Argentine, 1964–), sculptures from the Foreigners series, 2013–15. Flaxseed paper porcelain, height 25 cm. Photo: Bernard G. Mills.
Oh! how my mind Is gravel’d! Not a thought That I can find, But’s ravel’d All to nought. Short ends of threads, And narrow shreds Of lists, Knots, snarled ruffs, Loose broken tufts Of twists, Are my torn meditation’s ragged clothing; Which, wound and woven, shape a suit for nothing. One while I think, and then I am in pain To think how to unthink that thought again.
How can my soul But famish With this food? Pleasure’s full bowl Tastes rammish, Taints the blood: Profit picks bones, And chews on stones That choke. Honor climbs hills; Fats not, but fills With smoke. And whilst my thoughts are greedy upon these, They pass by pearls, and stoop to pick up peas. Such wash and draff is fit for none but swine; And such I am not, Lord, if I am thine. Clothe me anew, and feed me then afresh; Else my soul dies famish’d and starv’d with flesh.
I first encountered this poem in Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, edited by Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson. I had never heard of Christopher Harvey (1597–1663), an English clergyman and minor poet who was a contemporary of John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and Richard Crashaw, the so-called Metaphysical poets. Apparently out of a sense of humility, Harvey published his poetry anonymously during his lifetime. This poem is from a slim 1640 volume of his titled The Synagogue, or, The Shadow of The Temple, but his name didn’t start appearing on the title page until the nineteenth century. Read about the mysterious publication history of The Synagoguehere.
“Confusion” uses an unusual stanza form that befits the subject, with uneven line lengths that produce a raggedy appearance on the page. The rhyme scheme is abc abc dde ffe gghh, with an additional rhyming couplet at the end of the second stanza.
The speaker says his mind is all jumbled, unsettled. “Oh! how my mind is graveled!” he laments. “Not a thought that I can find, but’s raveled all to nought.” (“Graveled” is an archaic word meaning disarrayed, and “raveled” means entangled.) Launching into sartorial imagery, he compares his fragmented thoughts to old, partial, mismatched pieces of dress that fail to make up a coherent attire.
He doesn’t yet specify the nature of his thoughts, whether sinful (e.g., prideful, hateful, lustful) or simply trivial and unfocused on God or dominated by worry. Either way, he is suffering from intrusive and distracting thoughts that undo him.
In stanza 2 he shifts to the metaphor of food, and reveals that it is avarice he is struggling with—an insatiable need to acquire more and to be perceived as successful and important. In part to maintain an image, he indulges in the pleasures typical of rich men, which appear juicy and delicious, he says, but they actually taste quite rank (“rammish”) and make him sick. He cautions that wealth, social status, and human praise, if that’s what we feed on, not only fail to nourish (fatten) our souls; they can ultimately choke us or starve us to death.
Feasting on sensual gratification, expensive toys, and accolades instead of on Christ is like passing up pearls for peas, the speaker remarks. Such foods are the dregs, the refuse (“draff”), fit only for pigs, not for God’s children.
The closing couplet pulls together both stanzas, as the speaker asks God to clothe him in a whole new garment and to feed him afresh so that he is not “starved with flesh.” This final phrase, an oxymoron, suggests how the dishes served up by this world seem meaty but ultimately do not satisfy; when it comes to filling us, they’re as good as nothing, only leaving us empty.
Instead of being content to go about in tatters, eating slop, we must “clothe ourselves with the new self . . . in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24) and feed on Jesus, “the bread of life . . . come down from heaven” (John 6:35, 33).
I’ve seen over seventy films from 2023 (and there are still more I want to see!), and these are my top ten. My top eleven through twenty will be released this weekend in a separate post. Many are international, and what year to classify them as can be hazy; I go by the date on which the film was released in the US, which is when I have access to it.
If the film is streaming for free with a subscription service, I’ve noted that at the bottom of the entry. Otherwise, most are available for digital rental (Google Play is my preferred vendor), and a few are still in theaters. You might also see if your local library has any on DVD, as that’s how I watched several of these.
Please be aware that the following films have either PG-13 or R ratings, for various reasons. I don’t have a personal policy of “no x” or “no y” in the movies I watch, but if you do, please consult the MPAA rating descriptors or a more detailed content advisory before deciding whether to view the film.
1. Past Lives, dir. Celine Song. Kind, gentle, and empathetic, this semiautobiographical indie drama by debut director Celine Song follows Na Young, or Nora (Greta Lee), over the course of twenty-four years, from her young adolescence in South Korea to her emigration to Canada and then the US. Act 1 introduces us to Nora’s childhood sweetheart, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), whom she reconnects with virtually twelve years later in act 2, shortly before meeting and befriending a white American man named Arthur (John Magaro) at a writers’ retreat. After another twelve years of not interacting, Nora and Hae Sung find each other again in act 3 at age thirty-six, when the single Hae Sung visits Nora, who’s now married to Arthur, in New York.
What I love about this film is how it subverts all the tropes associated with the romantic triangle. The characters aren’t possessive, conniving, or competitive. There are no heroes or villains here. The film is about bonds of love and culture, and especially about what trust, support, constancy, maturity, and love look like in a marriage. In an interview on the DVD special features, Song says Past Lives is at its core a love story between Nora and Arthur. It’s also a story of navigating a bicultural identity—living between two worlds, mourning the piece of oneself that’s lost with the adoption of a new home country, and integrating elements of one’s “past life” into one’s new life, continuing to be shaped by both.
The opening scene and closing scene are perfect. Song’s skill as a storyteller, honed over her years as a successful playwright, really shines through in her screenplay.
2. The Zone of Interest, dir. Jonathan Glazer. This chilling Holocaust drama centers on a Nazi family living their dream life in the literal backyard of the Auschwitz concentration and death camp. Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel)—who is an actual historical figure—is the commandant of the camp; having risen through the ranks, he seeks to provide his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their five children a comfortable and idyllic life. It’s a risky choice to tell this story from a German perspective, but Glazer and the two lead actors more than succeed. We never actually set foot inside the camp; most of the scenes happen within the confines of the villa or at the nearby river where the family goes on outings. Nor do we directly see any of the horrors; we see merely hints, like smoke rising from a crematorium chimney in the background. But even more, we hear these intimations: a train pulling into the station, a tussle, a chase, a barking dog, a gunshot, screaming. All of this happens just over the wall, while Hedwig tends to her flower garden or her son plays with toys in his bedroom. (Props to the sound designer, Johnnie Burn.)
What is so disturbing about the film is the banality of evil that it reveals. Rudolf isn’t the type of villain who sneers or snarls or has violent outbursts. He brings his kids kayaking and reads them bedtime stories; he sips coffee with his wife. He could be us. “I wanted to show that these were crimes committed by Mr. and Mrs. Smith at No. 26,” Glazer said. Sanitization is one of the themes explored—lots of scrubbing.
3. Four Daughters, dir. Kaouther Ben Hania. Blending documentary and fiction, this film tells the true story of a Tunisian Muslim mother—Olfa Hamrouni—and her four daughters, the elder two of whom became radicalized by ISIS as teenagers and ran away to Libya to engage in jihad. In 2016 Kaouther Ben Hania saw media segments of Olfa calling out local authorities for their indifference and inaction and knew she wanted to make a film about the disappearance, to understand how a tragedy like this can happen in a family. She originally wanted to do a straight documentary but soon realized it would be more powerful, and more feasible, to have Olfa and her younger daughters, Eya and Tayssir Chikhaoui (born in 2003 and 2005), reenact their memories onscreen. Because daughters Ghofrane and Rahma Chikhaoui are still absent, actors Ichrak Matar and Nour Karoui were hired to portray them, and actor Hind Sabri stepped into the mother role for the scenes that took too high an emotional toll on Olfa.
This method of storytelling better reveals the story’s complex layers, as the three women are both inside and outside the scenes. They’re telling the past, but they’re also questioning it. They’re reflecting on their motivations as they discuss their memories with each other and Ben Hania—many of them traumatic, but others warm or simply ordinary, as when they talk about their first periods! Olfa, the mother, is a particularly complex character, as she is fiercely protective of her daughters but also perpetuates on them some of the patriarchal oppression that she herself suffered. The film is about motherhood, sisterhood, zealotry, rebellion, and violence, and it has left a searing impression on me.
4. Anatomy of a Fall, dir. Justine Triet. In this courtroom drama set in the French Alps, Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is suspected of her husband Samuel’s (Samuel Theis) murder. As the police investigate and the prosecution launches its interrogations, they uncover details about Sandra and Samuel’s conflicted relationship, and the couple’s visually impaired eleven-year-old son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), is forced to testify. Hüller’s performance is riveting—she gets my vote for Best Actress of the Year.
5. Saint Omer, dir. Alice Diop. Another French courtroom drama, this one based on the real-life story of Fabienne Kabou. Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a Senegalese immigrant to France, is on trial in Saint-Omer for the murder of her fifteen-month-old daughter, Lili, an action she blames on sorcery. Intrigued by the case as potential source material for the novel she’s working on, Rama (Kayije Kagame), pregnant, travels from Paris to attend the trial. But when Laurence’s motives prove inscrutable and mental illness is put on the table, Rama begins to worry about her own ability to mother. The testimony dredges up emotions for Rama surrounding her troubled relationship with her mother—also a Senegalese immigrant, who appears, from the flashback sequences, to suffer from depression—and sharpens her sense of cultural alienation. Rama is an analogue for the filmmaker, Alice Diop, who, as a documentarian and expectant mother at the time, attended the Kabou trial, and it forced her to face her own difficult truths.
Streaming on Hulu.
6. Dream Scenario, dir. Kristoffer Borgli. Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) is an evolutionary biologist teaching at a small-town college and living a quiet life with his wife and two daughters, when out of nowhere, he starts appearing in the dreams of strangers around the world and becomes instantly famous. An absurd comedy with elements of horror, Dream Scenario satirizes the fickle nature of celebrity in today’s internet age, in which even the most unremarkable people can become an overnight sensation, and the adoration of fans can turn to hatred at the drop of a hat. I was laughing out loud a lot at this one—and cringing too!
7. Fremont, dir. Babak Jalali. Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) is a young Afghan immigrant working at a fortune cookie factory in the Bay Area of California. Formerly a translator for the US Army in Afghanistan, she is ostracized by many of her fellow Afghans as a traitor, and she struggles with loneliness. But the film has an uplifting tone; it’s about survival, hope, and connection. The first full-length feature by the Iranian British filmmaker Babak Jalali, it is in English, Dari, and Cantonese.
Streaming on MUBI.
8. Monster, dir. Kore-eda Hirokazu. When her eleven-year-old son, Minato (Soya Kurokawa), starts behaving strangely and she hears that a teacher hit him, Saori (Sakura Ando) demands answers from the school. The story is told in three parts, each from a different narrative perspective: first the mom’s, then the teacher’s, then the boy’s. The truth gradually emerges with each shift, and a stormy finale brings things to a close.
9. Plan 75, dir. Chie Hayakawa. In a near future, the Japanese government launches a voluntary but coercive program encouraging the nation’s elderly citizens to terminate their lives in order to nobly reduce the burden on society. Having been forced to retire from her job as a hotel maid after one of her coworker peers slips in a hotel shower, Michi (Chieko Baishô) is considering signing up. The film focuses on her but also develops side stories for two Plan 75 employees: a Filipino migrant whose daughter back home needs an operation, and a man whose estranged uncle becomes a client.
10. Killers of the Flower Moon, dir. Martin Scorsese. Based on the best-selling nonfiction book by David Grann about the serial murder of members of Osage Nation in the 1920s, Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon depicts the criminal ugliness of white greed and laments a grave historical injustice. When the Osage discover oil on the reservation they’ve been displaced to in Oklahoma, they become very wealthy, and white men from the outside move in to try to steal that wealth. The white crime boss and master of deception William Hale (Robert De Niro)—the movie uses all the real names—has ingratiated himself with the Osage over decades and has secretly been carrying out a plan to gain control of Osage headrights by killing off inheritors.
The movie focuses on Hale’s nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a simpleton whom Hale compels to marry the young Osage woman Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) and further manipulates to manipulate others. The movie suggests that the love been Ernest and Mollie is genuine but complicated, and I didn’t quite grasp what bound them together (was it just physical attraction?) or how much either of them knew about what was going on (was Ernest really that naive? did Mollie never suspect him or his uncle of foul play earlier on?). But I was engrossed for the full three-and-a-half-hour runtime, all the way to the gutsy final scene of the radio play and the beautiful, defiant coda.
Cairn by James Brunt, Filey Beach, East Yorkshire, England, 2018
We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.
Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.
Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.
This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as
what is scarce.
Alice Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. Born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of sharecroppers, in 1982 she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career, Walker has published numerous best-selling works of fiction, poetry collections, essays, and children’s books. She lives in Mendocino, California.
At first glance this poem may seem naive or flippant about economic realities. In the world we’ve created, money is a necessity. My country, the United States, has suffered two recessions in recent memory: in 2007–9, when the subprime mortgage crisis led to the collapse of the US housing bubble, and during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic in March and April 2020, when more than twenty-four million Americans lost their jobs. Lack of money can have disastrous effects.
But “We Alone” is not denigrating those who stress about not having a paycheck or not being able to afford basic provisions. Rather, it is critiquing a system that creates those conditions, a system in which money has been elevated to godlike status, and wealth is consolidated in the banking and corporate institutions headquartered on Wall Street, which engage in predatory activities that harm and debase. Capitalism is built on self-interest, profit, and acquisitiveness, and therefore it can easily breed greed, a voraciousness for more and more, which often comes at the expense of others.
Alice Walker has said elsewhere that “capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.”[1] In her essay “All Praises to the Pause,” she writes,
Capitalism . . . cannot possibly sustain itself without gobbling up the world. That is what we see all around us. Women and children in Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Haiti, Mexico, China and elsewhere in the world forced into starvation and slavery as they turn out the tennis balls and cheap sneakers for the affluent. Ancient trees leveled to make more housing while housing that could be saved and reused is torn down and communities heartlessly displaced. Mining of the earth for every saleable substance she has. Fouling of the waters that is her blood. Murdering innocents, whether people, animals or plants, in pursuit of oil.[2]
(Related reading: report from “Can Capitalism Be Ethical?,” a lecture by Dr. Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, Murray Edwards College Cambridge, November 2, 2016)
My purpose here is not to argue for or against specific economic systems, nor is that the point of this poem. What Walker challenges in “We Alone” is the pervasive notion that people and things are worth only what the market says they are. Have you, too, bought in to that lie? Do you fail to value the things that are free and plentiful in life, like shells on the beach, or birdsong, or a refreshing rain? Ordinary gifts like that operate outside the laws of supply and demand and suggest the beautiful abundance of God’s economy.
On a few occasions the Bible uses the term “mammon” to refer to riches and their pernicious influence. Jesus preached against mammon in his Sermon on the Mount, famously warning the crowds, “You cannot serve both God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). The church fathers personified mammon as an evil master who enslaves, and medieval Christian writers named it a demon. Walker, too, acknowledges how wealth can hold us captive, the word “chain” in her poem pulling double duty, referencing on the one hand a metal-link ornament holding a jewel or a watch, and on the other hand a shackle.
To not care about filling our coffers is a countercultural stance. To not be constantly checking the rise and fall of stock prices, or obsessing about our investment portfolio.
Those who overvalue material assets will miss out on the more satisfying riches that abound in the natural world, which don’t have to be worked for or taken from others to be enjoyed.
NOTES
1. Alice Walker, quoted in Fernanda Sayão, “Capitalism” (Rio de Janeiro: Animal Farm Research, 2012), 14.
2. Alice Walker, “All Praises to the Pause; The Universal Moment of Reflection,” commencement address, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, May 19, 2002, in We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness (New York: The New Press, 2006), 77–78.
Art & Theology 