Tony Watkins

British philosopher AC Grayling was interviewed in The Observer on Sunday (5 July 2009). It’s a series of soundbites rather than anything detailed. This one caught my eye:

I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.

What? The first sentence suggests Grayling knows very little about Jesus and yet is prepared to idly speculate on what he might be, without engaging with the evidence. Second, how on earth does he make the link to Dawkins? Is Dawkins a moral reformer in any sense at all? He may be an outspoken defender of a particular position but it hardly makes for an equivalence with Jesus, even if you do reject Jesus’s divinity. Grayling is a very bright man, and I always enjoy listening to him on Radio 4 discussions, but this quote betrays his blind spot and bias.

I was also struck by this comment:

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.

I wonder what Grayling means by this. The Bible is God’s self-revelation and the account of his dealings with human beings. What story could start with the apple falling on Newton (a historically dubious event anyway)? The story of the growth of modern science and the way it has replaced religion with hard-nosed rationalism? The growth of modern science is a great story, but it doesn’t start with Newton and it has not supplanted religion. There are very many people who have see no conflict between the two, but rather synergy. Is it to be a bible in the sense of a handbook of essential knowledge about a particular subject? If so, I still don’t see why he’s starting with Newton. Is he wanting to imply that Newton’s insights about gravity are a significant moment of enlightenment, when human beings first realise that things don’t fall as a result of God’s direct and immediate action?

I know this is one of those infuriatingly brief and shallow interviews which are so popular these days, but surely a philosopher of Grayling’s ability is able to be speak concisely without these dubious connections.

July 9th, 2009 | Tags: AC Grayling, Jesus, Philosophy | Category: Philosophy, Ping.fm, belief | Leave a comment

Optimum Film Releasing is ten years old today, according to ScreenDaily. It has an impressive track record of distributing very interesting independent films in the UK. Rudo & Cursi is currently on release and the charming Coco Before Chanel is due on 31 July. Optimum has just announced that it has acquired the UK rights to a film I’m really looking forward to: The Last Station, which is the story of the final year in the life of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his marriage to Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren). The film is written and directed by Michael Hoffman, and also stars James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti and Anne-Marie Duff.

July 9th, 2009 | Tags: film, film news | Category: film | Leave a comment

At the risk of being seen as a shameless self-promoter, I would suggest that my own book, Focus: The Art and Soul of Cinema, is a key read for any Christian who wants to think about film and worldviews, largely because I wrote it to deal with this specific issue in a way no other books did (the closest being Brian Godawa’s Hollywood Worldviews).

Some other books I recommend highly (in alphabetical order, by author, not in terms of merit):

Peter Fraser and Vernon Edwin Neal, ReViewing the Movies: A Christian Response to Contemporary Film (Focal Point) (Crossway, 2000).
Brian Godawa, Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom & Discernment second edition (IVP, 2009)
Jeffrey Overstreet, Through a Screen Darkly: Looking Closer at Beauty, Truth and Evil in the Movies (Regal, 2007)
Nick Pollard, Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult: With Study Guide (IVP, 1997)
William D. Romanowski, Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture, second edition (Brazos Press, 2007)
James W Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalogue (InterVarsity, 2004)

I will update this page with further recommendations and some comments when I get chance.

July 9th, 2009 | Tags: Christian, film, Focus, worldviews, writing | Category: Christian, film | Leave a comment

An Education is to be released in UK cinemas on 30 October 2009, and I’m very much looking forward to it. It went down very well at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. My fear is that, being the kind of independent film it is,  it will only end up in the small independent cinemas like the wonderful Harbour Lights in Southampton or have very short runs in the multiplexes. I hope UK film distributors E1 (and Sony Pictures Classics in the USA) will give it a good push. It won two prizes at the Sundance Film Festival easlier this year: World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic and the World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic.

Carey Mulligan, who for Doctor Who fans is unforgettable as Sally Sparrow in ‘Blink’, stars as a brilliant teenager who is set to go to Oxford, when she falls under the spell of a wealthy, urbane older man. The cast also includes Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson, and Dominic Cooper. Perhaps even more exciting that this impressive line-up is that the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby. An Education is directed by Danish director Lone Scherfig. I confess I knew nothing about her until yesterday, but what I’ve read suggests she’s very talented.

July 8th, 2009 | Tags: Doctor Who, film, film news, Nick Hornby | Category: film | Leave a comment

Filming started in London yesterday (6 July) on St. Trinian’s II: The Legend Of Fritton’s Gold. As a boy I loved the original St. Trinian’s films, especially the first three: The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954), Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s (1957) and The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966). I have no recollection of director Frank Launder’s other two in the series, The Pure Hell of St. Trinian’s (1960) and The Wildcats of St. Trinian’s (1980). When Oliver Parker’s new version, simply called St. Trinian’s, in 2007, I didn’t want to watch it because it was unlikely to be good enough to compare with my childhood memories. And the reviews were not, on the whole, very positive.

I’m hoping Parker and co-driector Barnaby Thompson will do a better job of this new one, not least because it will be starring David Tennant. Rupert Everett will return as the headmistress, Miss Fritton, and it will also star Colin Firth, Gemma Arterton, Talulah Riley, Jodie Whittaker, Juno Temple, Tamsin Egerton, Celia Imrie, Fenella Wollgar and Montserrat Lombard.

Screen Daily reports:

The film see the girls embark on a rollercoaster-style treasure hunt for the legendary Fritton’s Gold, which sees them face the villainous Pomfrey, played by Tennant, and his sidekicks from the women-hating secret society known as AD1.

July 7th, 2009 | Tags: David Tennant, Doctor Who, film, film news | Category: film | Leave a comment

Sunshine Cleaning, directed by Christine Jeffs (2009).
This article was first published on Culturewatch, and is republished here by permission. © Tony Watkins and Pete Hartwell, 2009

The Lorkowskis are a dysfunctional family. Rose (Amy Adams) is a thirty-something single mother who works as a cleaner and is having an affair with her old high school sweetheart, Mac (Steve Zahn). Rose’s sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), is a slacker. She has no meaningful relationships, can’t hold down a job, and still lives at home with her father, Joe (Alan Arkin), whose many schemes to make a quick buck come to nothing. The biggest fracture in the family is the shadow of the suicide of Rose and Norah’s mother when they were young. It seems that none of them have never fully dealt with their grief, which hinders them from moving on in life.

Rose’s son Oscar (Jason Spevack) is the only member of the family who expresses himself freely – sometimes a little too much so. He becomes a catalyst for change in the rest of the family when he is excluded from yet another school. Rose decides she must get him into a private school, but she earns nowhere near enough money. So when she discovers she can make far more by cleaning up crime scenes than from her regular job, she recruits her reluctant sister, and together they go about cleaning blood-splattered walls, putrid mattresses and other residues of death.

The premise of Sunshine Cleaning could have made for a tasteless, slapstick comedy. But director Christine Jeffs and screenwriter Megan Holley, with admirable restraint, avoid cheap laughs, yet still use black humour to draw us in to a surprisingly sensitive, bittersweet character drama. Rose and Norah (and, to a lesser extent, Joe) are complex, refreshingly real characters who find themselves working through major issues in their own lives and in their relationship to discover genuine happiness which has, so far, eluded them.

At the start of the film, the family seems to be held together only by care for Oscar; he keeps them talking to one another. The relationships between the adults seem very functional and lacking emotion, and they are all highly critical of each other’s way of living. Rose and Joe are exasperated at Norah’s indolence and failures, whilst Norah contends that Rose is deluded for believing Mac will leave his wife for her. Rather than supporting and encouraging each other, the sisters are thorns in each other’s side. And they receive little warmth from Joe, who seems to feel that his daughters have never appreciated just how hard it’s been for him since his wife killed herself. Perhaps it’s the strain on these fundamental relationships, or maybe the emptiness of life generally, which drives Rose to seek comfort in the arms of a lover, and Norah to seek comfort through partying and sleeping around. The problem is that none of these relationships fulfil their emotional needs, and their lives are diminished as a result.

However, their encounters with death, and with those experiencing tragic loss, enable them to see life in new ways. In one powerfully poignant scene, Rose and Norah arrive at a house to clean up after an elderly man’s suicide. Seeing the widow’s distress, Rose looks beyond the job to the needs of the living, and she simply sits with the lady, holding her hand. Rose reaches out with genuine empathy because of her own experience of loss. Her brokenness is what enables her to do something beautiful. Later, Rose is with some people she hasn’t seen since High School and she vocalises how much she appreciates the job. She is touched by the privilege of entering ‘people’s lives when they’ve experienced something profound and sad’, because, ‘in some small way, we help’. It creates in both Rose and Norah a sense of purpose in life. They want not only to excel at their work professionally, but also to help emotionally those who are left behind.

Dealing with death on a daily basis also enables the sisters to talk about their mother’s death – a profound moment of connection which moves them both to tears. It is a crucial part of a healing process for the whole family. This catharsis and their newfound sense of purpose empower them to deal with the mess in their own lives and repair their relationships, to redeem the pain of the past and find hope for the future.

Sunshine Cleaning also touches on spiritual questions concerning death and life. When Rose buys a van for the business, Oscar asks about its CB radio but misunderstands when the salesman explains that it broadcasts his voice to the heavens. Later, he climbs into the van, pulls down the handset and asks some deep questions: ‘What was I before I was born? What happens when we die?  Can you see everything down here? If you don’t believe in heaven, where do you go when you die?’ Towards the end of the film, Rose does something similar, and she quietly sits in the van, using the radio as a chance to put into words what she would love to be able to say to her mother. There are questions about what happens after death, but no answers. Rose certainly doesn’t know, but she expresses a common hope that there is something more than this life.

The fear of death is constantly in the background in Sunshine Cleaning, and it’s something which many people prefer not to think about. In an age of rapidly developing medical technology, we begin to stop seeing death as something inevitable. But it is, and as this film reminds us, it can come unexpectedly and traumatically. However, the Bible affirms strongly that death need not be the ultimate tragedy, something to be feared, because of what God’s Son, Jesus Christ has done for us:

Because God’s children are human beings – made of flesh and blood – the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. (Hebrews 2:14–15)

Jesus sets people free from the fear of death because he died the death we deserve for our rejection of God’s rule in our lives. But it all depends on whether or not we accept what he has done for us. We can continue in our rejection of him, or we can accept this extraordinary gift – and then we can see death as the threshold to an eternity with God. This life remains full of pain and grief, but it need not be without hope. Rose and Norah find hope awakening in their broken lives as a result of death reshaping their perspectives and values. But it’s a limited hope. The hope Jesus offers is far more profound, bringing wholeness instead of brokenness, bringing a deep inner cleaning instead of the stains of our rejection of God, and giving us life instead of death:

When God our Saviour revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:4-5)

June 27th, 2009 | Tags: death, film, hope, life, loss, past, regret | Category: Damaris, film | Leave a comment

Summer is here at last. We spent the cold, wet winter yearning for it to arrive, and now complain about the cold and wet ruining barbecues, camping trips and cricket matches. But maybe we’ll have the predicted heat-wave, and we’ll moan about that instead. But at least it’s time for a break, which is what really matters.

Many of us crave holidays in the sun. In 2007, Brits took almost 70 million holiday trips overseas, which is more than one each, and a third of those were to Spain. Thanks to the credit crunch, this year will be very different with many choosing to holiday in the UK, even remaining at home for a ‘staycation’.

In his book, The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton gives a primary reason why people travel: the desire for something different, for the exotic. This is why the average Brit has visited only 2 per cent of UK towns and cities, and why a Mamma Mia-inspired Greece appeals so strongly. De Botton suggests that we have this desire because we are dissatisfied with life as it is. ‘What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home,’ he writes.

Something fresh

Our lives are mundane. When everything is familiar we start taking it for granted. We cannot imagine that our environs have any charms because we see them every day. We rarely visit local tourist attractions because they are always there and we could go whenever we like. We long for something fresh, something we’ve not seen before.

Meanwhile, even those of us who enjoy our work find parts of it a drag and we long for a break. Back in 1955, psychologist Erich Fromm suggested that western society is profoundly unhealthy because of work’s impact on mental health. It is more stressful than ever today, with more than 2 million people a year suffering work-related ill-health.

And don’t get me started on day-to-day life’s frenetic pace. Nobody seems to have any time to relax. No wonder we’re all crying out for an opportunity to get away from it all and unwind. The urge to escape, if only for a short time, is a strong one.

Part of the joy of holidays for many people is the escapism of a good book. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code sequel, The Lost Symbol, comes out too late for the beach this year. But the Richard and Judy Book Club Summer Reads, including Bateman’s Mystery Man and Janice Lee’s The Piano Teacher, will be packed in many suitcases. The summer is also a time for escapism in the movies. Ice Age 3, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Time-Traveler’s Wife are all sure to draw in big audiences of people who relish the opportunity to be taken, albeit briefly, to another time or place.

But at the heart of the holiday is the prospect of peace. That’s exactly what the Pearson family are about to enjoy in the family thriller Aliens in the Attic; a perfect family vacation.Unfortunately, their holiday is wrecked by, well, aliens in the attic. And the honeymooners in A Perfect Getaway have their tranquillity shattered when two killers stalk them.

A right to happiness?

Ordeals like this an exaggeration of a fear that we all face. We dread having our holiday ruined, whether by builders finishing the hotel, noisy campers in the neighbouring tent, or a deluge turning the great outdoors into a soggy swamp. We feel cheated of our right to some happiness. It’s more fundamental than that, though, since we do not have a right to happiness. The real issue is that our desire for peace has been thwarted.

The yearning is deep inside each of us. It is not necessarily a hankering for quietness, since some of us relish activity. But we all hunger to feel at peace with the world, our families and ourselves, and that can be very elusive in the normal daily round. Time spent in rest and recreation can certainly help us rediscover something of this, enabling us to find some inner calm.

But of course nothing really changes in the long run. Our equanimity is sometimes disappointingly short-lived, evaporating at the sight of a clogged inbox. Even while we’re on holiday, we know that our failings remain part of us.

The truth is that this world cannot deliver the deep, lasting peace we long for. And yet we thirst for it because we were created to experience it in a relationship with God. This is why we travel in search of new places and new experiences. As C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’

June 27th, 2009 | Tags: happiness, holidays, peace, relaxation, rest | Category: Society | Leave a comment

Looking for Eric, directed by Ken Loach (2009).
This article was first published on Culturewatch, and is republished here by permission. © Tony Watkins, 2009

Eric Bishop, brilliantly played by Steve Evets, is an unassuming, introverted postman in Manchester, who is burdened with a great deal of emotional baggage. Director Ken Loach describes him as, ‘an intelligent man who suffers from panic attacks and it’s really interfered with his ability to stay in a relationship. His response to it is just to put his head in the sand, go out with the lads, go to the games, have a drink and not deal with it.’

When his life goes into meltdown, he has little in the way of inner resources to cope. After a panic attack one day, he ends up driving round and round a roundabout the wrong way, eventually being halted by an inevitable crash. His friends at work rally round to support him, led by Meatballs (John Henshaw) who turns to self-help books from the library in an attempt to build Eric’s self-esteem. It’s not enough, though, because his problems spring from a broken heart.

Thirty years ago, Eric fell in love with Lily (Stephanie Bishop) when they met at a dance. They were devoted to one another, but once they were married and had a baby, Eric found himself struggling with the responsibility, as well as with relentless pressure from his overbearing father. At the baby’s christening, he suffered his first panic attack, and a short while later he walked out on Lily and baby Sam, and never returned. Somehow, Eric maintained contact with his daughter, and they have a good relationship, but Eric and Lily have not seen each other in years. Now Sam (Lucy-Jo Hudson) is a single mother herself and needs Eric’s help with looking after her baby, Daisy, while she completes her studies. The trouble is, this means collecting Daisy from Lily. It’s too much for Eric to handle, having spent the intervening years feeling torn apart by his feelings of guilt, and the love for her which he still feels so strongly.

To add to the complication of his life, he has another failed marriage behind him. Chrissie walked out on him seven years ago, leaving him with two boys from her previous relationships, Ryan (Gerard Kearns) and Jess (Stefan Gumbs). Eric has brought them up on his own, but now both of them are testing his patience to the limit. Loach emphasises that, ‘because at heart [Eric is] a very generous person, when they were younger he did have a reasonable relationship with them. But as they’ve become teenagers they do what teenagers do, which is if they see a weakness they exploit it. They destroy him. He’s left with a big house that he can’t manage, and of course chaos breeds chaos.’

The panic attack brought on by seeing Lily brings Eric to the brink of despair. Screenwriter Paul Laverty says, ‘He not only feels he is losing control of everything around him, but much more terrifying he feels he can’t even rely on himself. When Little Eric looks himself in the eye he confronts a lost man, heading for the precipice.’ Eric smokes a spliff and addresses his life-sized poster of his great hero, Eric Cantona: ‘Flawed genius, eh? Flawed postman, me. . . . Have you ever thought about killing yourself? Who loves you? Takes cares of you? . . . Have you ever done anything you’re ashamed of?’ Eric is astounded when Cantona appears in his room to give him advice and build his self-belief. This apparition may be a figment of Eric’s imagination, but it nevertheless enables him to begin to straighten out his thinking, get life back into perspective and find the courage to act.

One of the key challenges for Eric is to take risks in order to move forward. This starts with Cantona encouraging Eric to confront the past, no matter how fearful of doing so he may feel. ‘Without danger, we cannot get beyond danger,’ comes the gnomic advice. Eric takes his first step by opening a trunk containing mementoes of his time with Lily, and the two men reflect on how beautiful memories can be some of the hardest to deal with. They don’t talk about why this might be. Part of the reason, in Eric’s case at least, is that great memories throw the mistakes, unkind acts and conflicts of the past into even sharper relief, and drive home the sense of what has been lost or squandered. Eric’s fear is created by his sense of shame over the way he has acted, letting his one true love – and eventually everything else – slip through his fingers. He confesses that, ‘a lot of mistakes have been made; A lot of water has gone under the bridge.’ The real issue, however, is not mistakes, but failing to deal with them. He has made things so much worse by his refusal to communicate, to ask for forgiveness or to seek help. For Paul Laverty, this is at the heart of the film:

Past mistakes may fester; hurt and blame can tumble over each in an endless cycle that can still cast a shadow on our present. I thought about our fantastic gift of memory that can make 30 years ago burn with the intensity of yesterday. I reflected on how we can get ’stuck’, what makes for change, and what a complex endeavour it is to understand each other. What is hidden, and what is just too painful to confront? I wondered about our capacity to forgive, not just the other, but ourselves.

Eric’s past is a festering sore because he has never dared to endure the pain of confronting it in order to resolve it. Again and again, Cantona pushes him to take risks, with aphorisms like, ‘He who is afraid to throw the dice, will never throw a six.’ When the great footballer speaks about his own fear – that the chanting of his name by sixty thousand fans would stop – Eric is astonished. His realisation that his hero is just an ordinary man, who was prepared in game after game to deal with his fear and take risks, seems to empower Eric to begin to take control of the direction of his life. He take tentative steps towards Lily, and attempts to bring some order to his home. Gradually, with some major setbacks, he begins to recover a long-lost ability to act, rather than merely react.

Eric is longing for redemption: for forgiveness and acceptance from the woman he has always loved, for freedom from fear and panic attacks and for a sense of well-being that comes from a life at peace rather than in chaos. Love, freedom and well-being are fundamental aspects of an integrated human life. It perhaps sounds trite for me, as a Christian, to suggest that Eric really needs to look further, to an even deeper redemption that comes only from God. Yet that is precisely what someone like Eric does need. The longings that he experiences are reflections of more profound yearnings which lie deep in every human heart because we are created to be in intimate relationship with him. If that is so, our lives are incomplete while that potential is unrealised.

What stands in the way of Eric finding limited redemption is the same as what prevents him finding ultimate redemption: himself. It is ironic that, even though Eric has problems with his self-esteem, he has a problem with pride, just like everyone else, which holds him back from doing the right thing. The core issue is that fears rejection. His logic is twisted by his emotions, but he seems to feel that as long as he avoids seeking reconciliation with Lily, he has only his sense of guilt and loss to live with, and he fears adding to that the certainty of being rejected.

He also fears risking any approach towards Lily because he never trusted her to forgive him. Although after Eric left her, she sent him a card with a dove of peace on it, expressing her complete love for him, he evidently could not imagine that her love would be great enough to forgive him. It suggests a deep sense of personal inadequacy, due in no small measure to his father. It is not until he is prepared to humble himself to seek Lily’s forgiveness that he will discover how real, how unconditional, her love for him still is, and in the process he will find himself.  If that is true in human relationships, it is even more true of our interaction with God. Indeed, God sent not merely a token of his love for us, not a sign of peace, but came himself in the person of his Son. He stepped into our world, not as an imagined hero dispensing enigmatic advice, but as a real man. He came to make peace with us, despite all our weaknesses, failures and hostility, through dying on a cross and rising again. Eric’s story, like so many stories of human love amid our brokenness, echoes something of this greater story.

June 25th, 2009 | Tags: culturewatch, film, guilt, regret | Category: Uncategorized, film | Leave a comment

Telstar, directed by Nick Moran (2009)

This article was first published on Culturewatch, and is republished here by permission. © Tony Watkins, 2009

Telstar is the powerful, often funny, but finally tragic story of Joe Meek (Con O’Neill in an extraordinary performance), an unorthodox, pioneering record producer in the early 1960s. Having already made a name for himself as a sound engineer, he set up a studio in a three-story flat above a luggage shop at 304 Holloway Road, London, where he invented many new recording techniques which revolutionised the music industry. With musicians and backing singers recording in different rooms, including the bathroom, it was frequently chaotic. The film starts in 1961 with songwriter and pianist Geoff Goddard (Tom Burke) arriving to meet Meek for the first time, and to record ‘Johnny Remember Me’ with television idol John Leyton (Callum Dixon) and Meek’s house band, The Outlaws. Geoff is shy, but is also in awe of Joe Meek. He feels a particular connection with him, partly because they share an interest in spiritualism. Joe claimed to have predicted the date of Buddy Holly’s death, and Geoff believes that his new song has come from Buddy Holly beyond the grave. Joe invites Geoff to a séance at which a Ouijah board apparently predicts that the song will be number one.

It quickly becomes clear that Meek is the centre of a whirl of activity, and that his energy and enthusiasm enables him to bring together talented aspiring musicians and produce great results from limited means. It is also evident that he has a hair-trigger temper, and can switch from being ebullient and cheerful one moment, to being angry and vitriolic the next. Joe is immensely talented and inventive, but so confident in his own abilities that he sees himself right and everyone else as wrong. When Brian Epstein rings up, wanting Meek to record his new band, The Beatles, Meek refuses, claiming that ‘they’re rubbish’. This self-confidence shades into self-obsession, and becomes increasingly problematic as he wants everything to revolve around him.

In bed one night, after watching a television news item about Telstar, the first communications satellite, a tune comes to Meek, which he eventually persuades his new band The Tornados and Goddard to record. It becomes an enormous hit, not only reaching the number one spot in the UK, but also in the USA – the first time for a British band and only the fourth time a British single had achieved this.

Central to The Tornados, at least for Joe Meek, is Heinz Burt (JJ Field). Joe is smitten with him, and before long the two begin a homosexual affair, arousing the jealousy of Geoff Goddard. But the other members of The Tornados resent, even despise, Heinz, contributing to rising tensions in Joe’s world. Meek’s life is becoming increasingly out of control. He is so desperate for homosexual encounters that he brings rent boys to the flat, and engages in casual sex on Hampstead Heath and in public toilets. In 1963, he is arrested for importuning for immoral purposes, which makes the front-page news and results in public shame for Meek, his social circle withdrawing from him, and blackmail. It begins to take its toll on Joe’s fragile state of mind.

He is well down a path to self-destruction; several of them, in fact. As well as his reckless pursuit of sexual gratification, his work life becomes ever more frenzied and he is increasingly given to angry outbursts. At the same time he is drawn further into occult practices, and comes to believe that he is possessed (though the film does not make this clear). He is also taking drugs, ‘some to help [him] think’ and ‘some to stop [him] thinking’. All of this is driven by his self-absorption, and it is little wonder that he becomes more and more paranoid. He suspects Decca of bugging his studio and accuses people of betraying his secrets, notably Clem Cattini (James Corden). When a French composer sues him for plagiarism on ‘Telstar’, his royalties are frozen, leading to spiralling debts. Joe seems increasingly intent on alienating everyone around him, despite the advice of his business partner Major Banks (Kevin Spacey) to, ‘Look after your men, Joe. They’re the only thing looking after you.’ He tells Geoff, ‘You’ve always been an embarrassment to me,’ and Heinz leaves him and finds a girlfriend.

Director/co-writer Nick Moran (who also co-wrote, with James Hicks, the West End stage play on which the film is based) flags up the downward trajectory of Joe’s life throughout the film with flash-forwards to his psychotic destruction of his world. Yet although we know where it’s all leading – perhaps because we do know – the degeneration into madness of this accomplished man is shocking and increasingly distressing. Meek seems to be a man who is intent on destroying everything in his life. Which raises the question, why?

There’s an incident in his childhood which he seems to see as defining him. When out playing in the woods he came across some phosphorus, left by the military it seems. He discovered that putting a little into his hands and clapping would produce a puff of smoke, but then he got too much on and his hands were badly burned. It’s a good metaphor for Joe’s life. He repeatedly goes too far and pays the price. But the significance of this incident goes further than simply being a metaphor. At the hospital, his hands are attended to by a kind, handsome doctor, and young Joe seems to have developed a crush on him. It is not uncommon for boys to go through a phase of developing or crushes on men or other boys. It is usually a brief phase which is connected with preadolescent awkwardness in relating to the opposite sex. But two factors in Joe’s early life make this much more significant. One which is not mentioned in the film is that Joe’s mother wanted a daughter and brought him up as a girl for the first four years of his life, resulting in him being isolated from most of his peers and feeling persecuted. The second is that Joe’s father was injured during the war, suffered from shell-shock and, it seems, became somewhat incapable as a father. So as well as having a confused sense of identity, he lacked the affirmation from the same-sex parent which is so important in normal development. And the good-looking doctor who gives Joe his full attention has a big impact on the boy, which finally sets the course of his sexuality.

This doesn’t explain everything about Joe Meek, of course, but his sexuality and his persecution complex are central to his life. The music business is one of the few areas of life in the 1960s where he could be somewhat open about his homosexuality, but he still feels the constant need to prove himself: to show that he is right, and that he can produce what nobody else can. He is deeply resentful of others constantly wanting things from him without giving anything back, though that is exactly what he does himself. At one point Joe complains that Heinz is the only one who loves him for himself, not for what they can get out of him, though we later discover that Joe is mistaken in this too. Towards the end of the film, Geoff Goddard laments, ‘This place used to radiate. . . . We created miracles here. . . . [but Joe] sucks out everyone’s energy like a vampire. I can see where he’s going: it’s dark . . . I fear it may cost him everything.’

While Joe Meek’s self-destructive slide into psychosis is exceptional, in some ways it is just a more pronounced form of tendencies which exist in all of us. All of Joe’s outward behaviour ultimately springs from his most fundamental problem, which is idolatry of himself. He comprehensively centres everything on himself: his yearning for gratification, his need to be right and to be in charge, his drive to be at the forefront. There is no room for God in Joe Meek’s life because it is full of him; he has ignored the first of the ten commandments – ‘You must not have any other god but me’ (Exodus 20:3) – and what Jesus identifies as the greatest commandments – ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:35–40). Instead he worships himself and puts his heart, soul and mind into pursuing money, sex, power and success. This is the most fundamentally destructive behaviour there is, since it is a wholehearted rejection of the God who alone can offer us meaning, purpose, fulfilment, peace, unconditional love and, crucially, redemption. All of us, like Meek, long for these things, but we look in all the wrong places. And unless we discover them in the right place – in God himself – we will miss out on redemption just as completely, though perhaps less spectacularly, as Joe Meek.

June 19th, 2009 | Tags: culturewatch, film, idolatry, self | Category: film | Leave a comment