{"id":127,"date":"2011-09-23T17:57:46","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T21:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/?p=127"},"modified":"2011-09-24T12:20:29","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T16:20:29","slug":"critique-of-just-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/reeligion\/2011\/09\/critique-of-just-reason\/","title":{"rendered":"Critique of Just Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

They must\u2019ve handed out bonuses recently at the New Yorker<\/em>, because Mssrs. Denby and Lane have been working against form lately (particularly the later) and seem to be actually enjoying the movies. That\u2019s apropos of nothing in particular except to note that one ought not ignore \u201cContagion,\u201d given a nearly rapturous review<\/a> by David Denby.<\/p>\n

\u201cContagion\u201d is directed by Steven Soderbergh<\/a>, who returned to the phase in his artistic cycle that reads \u201ctime to make a good, serious film.\u201d Part of the pleasure of Soderbergh\u2019s films is how he assembles a cast of A-list actors and, with them, can churn out either \u201cOcean\u2019s Eleven\u201d or \u201cTraffic,\u201d the first a celebration of celebrity and the second a reminder of why some folk might actually deserve their fame.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what I\u2019m interested in today. Instead, I want to reflect on Denby\u2019s final observation about the film. After noting that the heroism of \u201cContagion\u201d is performed by realistic scientists acting in realistic ways, Denby writes:<\/p>\n

. . . the heroes are all employees of the federal government, and instinctively factual people. No one prays, no one calls on God. \u201cContagion\u201d lacks any spiritual dimension\u2014except for a passionate belief in science and rational administration. The movie says: When there\u2019s real trouble, we\u2019re in the hands of the reality-based community. No one else matters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well then. On the one hand, this could be Denby\u2019s\u2014and perhaps Soderbergh\u2019s\u2014dig at Tea Party distrust of government or some of the anti-scientific excesses of the Bush administration. Or maybe it\u2019s just about Michele Bachmann<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, there is a clear theological judgment coming from Denby: when a metaphorical hell breaks loose, the only help we can count on is our own, human efforts and God both remain impressively absent. This isn\u2019t so much anti-religious as it is a critical and cinematic representation of the deus absconditus<\/em><\/a>: God has left us to fend for ourselves with what we\u2019ve been given.<\/p>\n

At least that\u2019s Denby\u2019s point; I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s Soderbergh\u2019s. In my viewing of the film, I noticed only two instances of overt religious imagery. The first comes in a montage of images used to convey global panic in the face of a contagious epidemic: empty airports, empty offices, empty streets, and an empty mosque. The impact of that brief shot is more cumulative than theological, a representation of how fear actually works. Better, when a disease spreads by touch and breath, to be in a fox hole than in a prayer hall. Which doesn\u2019t mean prayer doesn\u2019t happen, just that one wisely chooses to pray alone.<\/p>\n

Suleyman Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey. Empty only for photo-ops, refurbishment . . . or contagion.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second clip is no lengthier but certainly more complicated. A doctor for the World Health Organization, played by Marion Cotillard<\/a>, has been kidnapped in China\u2014where she was working to trace the origin of the pandemic\u2014and is held ransom for many months in a small village whose residents had been decimated by the disease. Her captors want only early access to a (as yet undeveloped) vaccine in exchange. When informed that she is about to be released, Cotillard is shown teaching English to children in a small open-air pavilion. As she exits, the scene cuts to an external view and the structure is shown to have a cross hanging near the apex. Was this a missionary school? Is it still? What do we make of its location in China? The film is set in the present-day, so we are either in a slightly alternative China (although other clues suggest this is very much the China of our own world), or the structure is a remnant from an earlier time or else clandestine. But Cotillard is not playing a missionary, she\u2019s a scientist. And the instruction is basic language skills, not doctrine. Soderbergh is a careful enough director that the cross is not an accident, which forces us to wonder \u201cwhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Marion Cotillard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I want to pause here for a moment to take exception with Denby\u2019s assertion that the film\u2019s heroes are \u201cinstinctively factual\u201d: more\u2014and sometimes rather\u2014than rational, the heroes are instinctively moral. Laurence Fishburne, playing a CDC director, violates protocol by telling his girlfriend to flee Chicago before word of the disease has been officially released, but also gives his own vaccination dose to the son of his building\u2019s janitor. Kate Winslet, also playing a CDC investigator, calls the front desk of her hotel to warn anyone who might have had contact with her after fearing she\u2019s become infected. Cotillard, upon learning that her ransom was paid with a fraudulent placebo, abruptly leaves her superior, perhaps to return to the village where she\u2019d been held captive. Matt Damon plays a father (and not a scientist) whose wayward wife first brings the disease to the US. He quarantines his teenage daughter\u2014an effective and sometimes funny depiction of the \u201cdad with a shotgun\u201d routine\u2014but also holds an intimate prom for her once her foolishly brave boyfriend has been vaccinated.<\/p>\n

These actions are sometimes rational but also sometimes contradict strictly rational behavior. They are, instead, human, and intensely moral in the sense that these people try to do more than save themselves and even others: they try to do the right thing, to weld reason and safety with compassion and love, to preserve not just life but the reasons for living.<\/p>\n

That, I think, is Soderbergh\u2019s agenda. Not simply the necessity of functional government, but more importantly the necessity of a functional and expansive soul. Whether that is incubated by a or any religion is irrelevant, but it is the heart of the story.<\/p>\n

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They must\u2019ve handed out bonuses recently at the New Yorker, because Mssrs. Denby and Lane have been working against form lately (particularly the later) and seem to be actually enjoying the movies. That\u2019s apropos of nothing in particular except to note that one ought not ignore \u201cContagion,\u201d given a nearly rapturous review by David Denby. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,19,21,20],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-contagion","tag-david-denby","tag-marion-cotillard","tag-steven-soderbergh"],"yoast_head":"\nCritique of Just Reason<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"They must\u2019ve handed out bonuses recently at the New Yorker, because Mssrs. 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