The Return of Ten Nominees Written in Stone!!!
For many years I have written a piece connecting the Ten Commandments to the approximately ten movies nominated for an Oscar that year. The movies themselves have some controversial themes and their inclusion here is not a recommendation to see them or an endorsement. In fact, as usual, I have only gotten to see a few. Still, I have read and stand behind all ten commandments and hope these thoughts help us explore them deeper with or without the movies.
I I am the Lord your G*d, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; Do not have any other gods before me. (Oppenheimer) The most famous line associated with Dr. Robert Oppenheimer is from Holy Scriptures from another faith: “Now I am become Death the Destroyer of Worlds” taken from the Bhagavad Gita, a foundational text of Hinduism, and spoken by a different god… which might seem an odd way to start of the Ten Commandments which are quite insistent that there is only One. The movie however makes clear that it is only interested in this verse as a touch point and, for those who saw the movie, it is clearly not about an overabundance of respect for the source. Still, for Oppenheimer this verse goes to the heart of what it really means to take upon oneself the most rarefied divine power …. The power to create and the power to destroy.
II You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.(Barbie) The idol that is central to the Barbie movie isn’t the plastic doll whose plastic world seems perfect, but rather the expectations of women and by extension men in the real world. In its own way, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s take on “Stereotypical Barbie” helps reveal the cracks in the idealization of gender roles with a method similar to Abraham breaking the idols of his time. While it may seem that the movie has all the answers when it comes to targeting Patriarchy in the name of female (and less binary) empowerment, the story does not end neatly. The Mojo Dojo Casa Houses are broken yet the Barbies realize that there was something wrong with their own system as well. Fitting for a movie inspired by a doll, what comes next requires imagination and openness to try something new.
III You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain (Poor Things) The third commandment is most often understood to be about uttering blasphemy, oaths and even curse words. However, G*d’s name is more than just something to be used carefully: according to deep seated Jewish lore the Name has the power to tap into Creation itself. The original Frankenstein story is the Golem: an artificially created humanoid brought to life by Yehuda Lowe, the Maharal of Prague by uttering the esoteric Names of G*d. While the practice in the hands of a great sage and mystic such as the Maharal can be salutary, stories of creating such a being almost always end in a tragedy brought about by underestimating the unleashed power of one’s own creation. Poor Things is also a Frankenstein story, albeit one with idiosyncratic twists. A woman’s body is reanimated with the mind of her own infant child and her journey takes her to very different discoveries than those of Mary Shelley’s monster. The arc of the golem-like protagonist may be different but the story rests on the same premise: when the ability to create life and revive the dead is done in the name of something other than G*d things never go as planned.
IV Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy (The Zone of Interest) What could a film depicting the carefree and luxurious life of the Nazi Commandant of Auschwitz have anything to do with the Sabbath, a taste of the world to come in harmony with both G*d’s creation and universal liberation? If Shabbat is meant to inspire such repair of the world, The Zone of Interest shows how perversely complete was the Nazi project of stripping the world of every semblance of holiness and dignity through complete dehumanization of millions of Jews and others they slaughtered in camps, in ditches, and ghettos. And in the literal shadow of the central death factory, the family of the commandant lives not ignoring but fully taking advantage of the doomed and degraded human beings around them for slave labor and amusement. Could anything be more of a desecration of the human potential invoked by the fourth commandment and its appeal not only to rest but to ensure rest and justice for even the least of the household? Could anyone trample more completely on the responsibility to treat every human being without exception as one instilled with the Divine Image?
V Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.(The Holdovers) The Holdovers comes from the tradition of movies that explore when someone becomes an unlikely father figure in another’s life. When we think about those who are not parents but play a similar role, whether by choice or happenstance, there is new insight about what is at the heart of parental relationships and what it means to honor a parent with integrity.
VI You shall not murder. (Anatomy of a Fall) At the center of this film there is a death. Whether or not it is a murder remains unknown. And that’s the point. A man dies falling from a window. His wife must provide a defense against the overwhelming suspicion that she, the only other person with him, is the one who perpetrated his death. As is made clear to her, being his wife makes the accusations even more inevitable. The commandment not to murder is shown to be eclipsed against the more obvious assumptions that human beings have every reason to do just that. Defense against the charge of murder is about disproving motive and opportunity not appeal to the moral code prohibiting taking another’s life.
VII You shall not commit adultery. (Past Lives) A movie about a married woman finding herself involved with a man with whom she grew up and shared nascent feelings two decades ago sounds like the perfect set-up for a tale about cheating. Instead Past Lives turns the situation on its head: the husband knows about this man visiting and is present with them as the man from her past muses about what could have been. The real threat of infidelity here is actually between the woman and herself. Loyal to her marriage she is seduced by the woman she is not, the life she did not live.
VIII You shall not steal (Killers of the Flower Moon) The crime investigated in this Osage reservation is murder but the greater crime is, as it often is, the wholesale theft of another’s land, livelihood, and cultural autonomy. In many ways it is the theft that is the crime that remains unpunished even as the murders are investigated.
IX You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (American Fiction) American Fiction is a story of using deception to reveal the truth. While it begins as a ridiculous exercise in creating a story so stereotypical it will call out the hypocritical expectations of who a Black author needs to be, this novel that becomes so unintentionally successful becomes a window into the deeper complexity of the author’s identity. Lying or falsity can be purposeful but getting at what the contrasting truth is is never as clear.
X You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Maestro) The life of Leonard Bernstein is a richly variegated symphony that could be presented with any number of themes, leitmotifs and recurring melodies. The thread chosen by Bradley Cooper in Maestro seems to be through Bernstein’s romantic passions, and lovers, his wife and his companions, with men and with women. Easy to miss under the prosthetics, affectations and virtuoso mimicry is that Maestro is not so much the story of how Bernstein’s lifelong love with wife Felicia is affected by his affairs and open relationships with mostly younger men, but rather the way he finds a struggle between his love of music and his drive to be a success and recognized for his genius. It is coveting not infidelity that is the original sin that gravely threatens his marriage and his happiness. A key phrase spoken by Felicia echoes like a refrain through the film: does summer sing within you? In other words music can only be made by one who feels a passion for life and not just a drive for recognition or achievement. Only when summer sings again within him, do we see the true genius of the man and the maestro.