Anyone paying attention to life and the world around them is able to see truth exposed every single day, every single minute of every hour (and sometimes even in our dreams truth slips in). However hard the powerful and well situated may try to cover it up with their own self serving dogmas or corporate doctrines, to recognize injustice and then to do nothing is to co-sign the inequity and all the suffering which results... even though, sometimes standing out as the one, lone voice crying out in the wilderness pretty well can take it all out of you. We get old (if we're lucky) and some of us get jaded - cynical: "It can't ever work out; these opposite and contrasting forces all in collision.
It's good to find like-minds in this fallen world and buddy up with others even though taking on Goliath in his many incarnations can indeed remain frightening....
So, someone please get the lights (nobody scream "Boo!", either) and grab some buttered pop-corn so that we might indeed discover at least one truth: that sometimes the brightest light comes from the darkest places (and grezziest fingers....
Puncture (2011)
"Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the Lord will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them." Proverbs 22:22-23.
Released in September 2011, "Puncture" is an Indie film that came out of the Tribeca Film Festival to great critical acclaim at the time of it's debut though largely has been dismissed by mainstream Hollywood critics. No surprise in that. "Puncture"provides a piercing look at one very flawed hero while documenting a still largely unnecessary on-going hazard to front-line health care workers. The film focuses on a late 1990s case in Texas involving a nationwide Big Pharma conspiracy that ignores the risk of AIDs, Heppotitus B & C and other infections to health care providers on the ground often working under less than ideal conditions to begin with. Still the concentration here surrounds the unusual persona and lifestyle of the plaintiff’s lead attorney, the late Mike Weiss, played extremely well by Chris Evans, as a functioning drug addict. In the movie’s opening moments, you see Mike rehearsing for an upcoming court battle thanks to an epiphany experienced in one of his drug-induced moments of clarity. These recurring moments of insight tends to make Mike mentally check out regarding every other obligation requiring his only partner pick up the slack. The long time High School buddy and law partner, Paul Danziger, is played by co-director Mark Kassen, who has to handle the nuts and bolts of their practice, like paying the bills and keeping the lights burning. Exasperated by Mike's predictable unpredictablity (while clueless as to the extent of his partner's addiction) in the end Paul is able to pick up the torch and carry it across the finish line.
Then his biggest case arrives. An ER nurse (Vinessa Shaw), injured by an exposed needle two years earlier, has contracted HIV. So she comes to Mike about a lawsuit. Surprisingly, this is not about her case but instead a suit against health industry giants for refusing to purchase a marvelous safety needle designed by a cranky old inventor (Marshall Bell). The invention is that of a syringe used once then discarded, thereby preventing nearly 800,000 annual wounds sustained by health-care personnel, which often lead to major injuries or death.
Weary of the routine personal-injury cases he pursues with his partner Paul Danziger (played by co-director Mark Kassen), Mike sees this as the firm’s Big Case. He isn’t necessarily wrong, but by now he is completely incapable of appearing before a judge or indeed a United States Senator (Kate Burton) without his drug problem being readily apparent. So the movie pursues its own peculiar dynamic — an oft-told David-versus-Goliath tale competing and losing out to a tale of extreme addiction.
The film is chock-a-block with extraordinary performances and no one will fault the filmmaking either. This is a well-made movie, make no mistake. It just suffers from a dysfunctional hero.
It could be argued that without his coke-fueled delusions of grandeur, Mike never would have urged so worthy a suit against such a legally protected bunch of crooks. So that’s the upsideto drugs. On the other hand ... tardy court appearances, malfunctioning thought processes, missed insurance payments — no, he’s not Sir Galahad. -- The Hollywood Reporter
The film is a true story based entirely on actual events. The final settlement resulted in the paltry sum of 150 million dollars as damages assigned against Big Pharma who continues to block universal application of safety needles in health care procedures. How many thousands/millions of lives have already been lost due to the corporation's love of money over all else (and all others) makes this settlement an insult really and their continuing disregard for human service workers demands we all do whatever we can to support our public servants who too regularly are called upon to place their lives at risk, not for money, but for each and every one of us, even the wretched, the drug addicted and the sex-aholics.
FLASHBACKS
Driving Lessons (2006)
Yes, that's Harry Potters sidekick, Rupert Grint, proving his talents aside from that decade long series completely, though he IS far over-shadowed by one amazing British actress, Julie Walters (the Rita from Educating Rita with Michael Caine, 1983) whose character's grandiose and outrageous narcissism is only outdone by the loneliness that decades of balooned egocentric and entitled rants must have produced.We first meet Evie as she hurls curses at the vegetation in her backyard while attacking it with pruning shears. In the process of somehow crying out for help in all of this by placing an ad in the local Christian Youth Newsletter, a funny thing happened on the way to that certain long time coming darkness of oblivion for this aspiring (but not-really) Grand Dame, Thesbian pretender... she found someone else on the lamb.
Ms. Walters is Evie Walton, a retired actress and legend in her own mind, who has affixed a bogus title to her name and flaunts a disheveled grandiosity to go with it. Despite her background interpreting Shakespeare and Chekhov, Dame Evie, as she calls herself, is known to the younger generation only from a trashy daytime soap opera called “The Shipping Magnates,” which one gushing follower of the show describes as “big on the gay scene.”...
Ben.. is a shy, carrot-topped youth from a strict Christian household who takes (the) job as Evie’s assistant. Ben dabbles in poetry and pines after a priggish Bible-spouting girl in his church...
The dramatic core of the movie is the struggle for Ben’s soul waged between two female monsters: one lovable (Evie), if impossible, and the other thoroughly detestable (Ben’s holier-than-thou Bible-thumping mother, Laura). Played by Laura Linney with an impeccable British accent that matches her character’s smiles of icy piety, Laura is treated with a loathing rarely seen in movies since the Freudian 1950’s, when evil, castrating moms made convenient scapegoats.
This movie is no friend of the church. Ben’s emasculated father, Robert (Nicholas Farrell), is an ardent bird-watcher who delivers mealy-mouthed sermons and would rather warble birdcalls to his son than develop any meaningful communication. The monster mother, meanwhile, is having an adulterous affair with the handsome young man handpicked to play Jesus in a church pageant she is overseeing.
Ben’s role in this ridiculous charade is a eucalyptus tree. When this spectacle is finally put on and goes amok with the appearance of Evie, the image of Ben peering miserably through his costume of leaves and branches is laugh-out-loud funny.
In a bizarre act of charity, Laura has also brought into the house a cross-dressing lunatic named Mr. Fincham (Jim Norton), who ran over his wife. The character, who develops an obsession with wearing Laura’s clothes, is strictly a plot device, reserved for one act of rebellion near the end of the movie.
It is through Evie that Ben learns to break his mother’s rules. Although he hasn’t earned a driver’s license, Evie insists he be her chauffeur. Violating Laura’s curfew, he takes Evie camping and later shepherds her to a literary festival in Edinburgh. Their relationship metamorphoses from embattled to mutually nurturing. -- The New York Times: Young Christian Is Thrown Into an Old Actress’s Den
I personally found the Screwball Aging Diva played off wonderfully against the strict and equally hypocritical Christian Shemale Control Maniac for poor Ben to have to find himself between and, of course, the film really is laugh-out-loud funny at several points, all that typically combine unthinkably contrasting elements such as Mexican Salsa and traditional Gallic music (such as the band which played during the scene where Benjamin got some dancing lessons and a pint) both with surprisingly good results.
Good for Ben, since after all, Driving Lessons is the story of figuring out how to get there when you're on your own (and, by "the way", good friends can help get cha there too).
End Credits / Closing Remarks:
Given that the greater part of our site's purpose here on the Street of Prophets is to provide a place where people who might describe themselves as faithful progressives can come together to explore not only faith but the larger questions that revolve around it and our hopes of impacting the world in a positive, progressive way, I am providing these sometime weekly film reviews (whenever). I thought that submitting reviews of controversial or off-the-beaten-track films that often nudge this kind of thought and discussion might be a plus. I'll be offering this each week on Fridays (as the Spirit moves me) and would happily entertain recommendations for future reviews. Feel free to post comments about the films reviewed here today as well as your own recommendations of films you feel may fall along these lines.
In Memory of Michael (Mike) Weiss, aged 33 when he departed.
My religion is to seek for truth in life and for life in truth, even knowing that I shall not find them while I live. Miguel de Unamuno