Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life”: How can a movie give “evidence of things not seen”?

Last updated on: December 13, 2019 at 6:59 pm By Eve Tushnet

I review, for America: With “A Hidden Life,” the writer and director Terrence Malick set himself a bold and perhaps impossible task: using all the visual resources of film to represent faith itself, “evidence of things not seen.” This nearly three-hour hagiography of the Nazi resister Blessed Franz Jägerstätter refuses any visible success. In a time when even Christians often justify our religion on the grounds that it produces measurable outcomes like stable families or feelings of personal happiness, Malick... Read more

I review “Knives Out”

Last updated on: December 13, 2019 at 7:57 pm By Eve Tushnet

at America, which gave it a much more enthusiastic headline than I really think this movie warrants! Ah well. The most unusual feature of “Knives Out”—the introduction of contemporary political tensions into a cheeky Agatha Christie homage—is also its least-satisfying element. “Knives Out” tells the twisty tale of the mystery author Harlan Thrombey and his fractious family, who gather for the patriarch’s 85th birthday party—at the end of which Thrombey is found dead. Thrombey (his name is a cute tribute... Read more

From Mercy to Delight: Wes Hill’s “The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying to Our Father”

Last updated on: December 11, 2019 at 5:21 pm By Eve Tushnet

My first Advent book was this slender volume of reflections on the various phrases of the Our Father, closing with the doxology and a beautiful little thing about praying with Rembrandt’s painting of the return of the prodigal son. I read it because Wes is a friend, but ended up finding treasures in it, so I’m writing about it in case some of you all want to check it out. It’s an uneven book. You’ll likely have your own list... Read more

My Novel “Punishment: A Love Story” Available as eBook!

Last updated on: December 11, 2019 at 11:11 am By Eve Tushnet

You can get it today on Kindle, or preorder for 12/15 release on Apple or Nook. If you, like me, read only palpable books made of artisanal tooth-chewed wood, you can get one of those……… soon. (I’ll update as soon as I know more.) UPDATE: I know more! Click here for the paperback via Barnes & Noble or here for Amazon. Desiree Schulman is home from federal prison—almost. When Des returns to Washington, DC under “conditional release,” she wants three... Read more

I’d Sell My Soul for Total Control: Staying Gay in the Church of Self-Improvement

Last updated on: December 4, 2019 at 3:11 pm By Eve Tushnet

I recently read John Wigger’s PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Evangelical Empire. It’s a gripping story which goes beyond one ministry to encompass the rise of televangelism–and the triumph of the prosperity gospel, which continues to resonate with Americans in spite of the fall of some of its most popular promoters. (For a good exploration of PTL’s religious roots, try the terrific review/essay where I discovered Wigger’s book.) Tammy was always a little more gritty,... Read more

Upstairs, Downstairs: I review “Parasite”

Last updated on: December 4, 2019 at 12:14 pm By Eve Tushnet

at AmCon: James C. Scott, in 1992’s Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, argues that behind the public face of every society there is a counternarrative written by the subordinate classes. This “hidden transcript” is in dialogue with the public face but always elusive, concealing its rebellion. “Parasite,” the new genre-bending comedy/horror/thriller from Bong Joon-ho (“The Host,” “Snowpiercer”), makes this “hidden transcript” literal in its tale of a hilltop mansion that hides the secrets of its household help.... Read more

Grifter, Tagger, Hobbit, Beast: Many very short film notes

Last updated on: December 3, 2019 at 10:24 pm By Eve Tushnet

LET’S DO THIS. The Lady Eve: Watched it again and loved it even more. Barbara Stanwyck’s a gem but honestly I’m not sure I’ve ever disliked a movie about a lonely grifter. Show me a con artist with an aching heart (she doesn’t even have to know she’s lonely! She can think she’s fine!) and I will want to just scoop both star and film up in my arms and carry them off to someplace where the cops will never... Read more

“An Image of God”: The Catholic Struggle Against Eugenics and Its Lessons for Today

Last updated on: November 30, 2019 at 5:26 pm By Eve Tushnet

Perhaps the most famous statement in the American history of eugenics is Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s one-liner upholding forced sterilization in Buck v. Bell, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Carrie Buck was sterilized against her will because she, her mother, and her baby daughter were judged “feeble-minded”–though there’s no clear evidence that any woman of the Buck family was actually mentally-disabled, and some evidence that Carrie and her daughter were completely normal in mental ability–and because Carrie... Read more

Apocalypse Scow: Charles Johnson’s “Middle Passage”

Last updated on: November 22, 2019 at 4:25 pm By Eve Tushnet

Middle Passage is a knife-thin, knife-sharp novel of revolt on a slave ship returning from the African coast. Charles Johnson, a black American Buddhist for whom all life is in essence One and division is simply a destructive illusion, wrings a violent parable from slavery, the most extreme form of division from the Other. It’s Lovecraftian, with all Lovecraft’s genius for depicting the horror of the formless, ancient, divine, and Other; it’s drunk on the language of ships, the horrors... Read more

Theology of Motherhood… By Actual Mothers?!

Last updated on: November 19, 2019 at 11:58 am By Eve Tushnet

That’s what Carrie Frederick Frost hopes to provoke with her slender new book, Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East. Frost is an Orthodox theologian and mom of (checks dedication page) five, and her book is not a treatise but an attempt to suggest possible paths for future theological work. It’s introductory, but I in fact did need and want an introduction, and Frost makes several smart choices about how to begin. Many Christians East and West... Read more