Bible in the movies: September 2009 Archives

The Coen brothers are out with a new one. Among my favorite film-makers today, the Coen brothers just released "A Serious Man," based in part on the biblical Job. I'm eager to see how they handle the story. Do they present their Job as a saint, of storied patience, like the popular characterization of this biblical figure. Or do they show their Job railing against his friends and even God, agonizing about his fate with alternating quietude and fury, as he appears in the biblical texts? I wonder how they present the origins of their Job's suffering. Is God be implicated, or no? And how does it end, since the biblical Job's final statement is a bit of an enigma, or at least affords a couple of different interpretations. Whatever the case, I anticipate some humor, gritty poignancy, and a fresh "take" on the timeless problem of undeserved suffering. 

Quentin Tarantino's new movie, Inglourious Basterds, was informed in part by taking part in a seder at Philip Roth's house. The Passover seder is a religious practice of remembrance commanded by none other than God in the Bible to commemorate God's liberating the Hebrew people from Egypt in order that they could be free to be servants of God. With violence, liberated from violence. 

In Inglourious Basterds, the extraordinary violence that characterizes Tarantino's filmic art takes on a new meaning in the context of a real, historical moment -- the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor, and Nobel prize-winning writer, has championed the importance of remembering -- of remembering in order to prevent horrific crimes such as genocide from happening again. 

Elie Wiesel and Quentin Tarantino on the Holocaust. In the same context? Discuss. What does remembering violence require? And to what end?