Ok, next question: is there a difference between the Spirit and emotions?

I think that discussion under the last post is a good one that I would like to keep going, but I think that this question is a separate and more foundational one. Can I have an emotional reaction that has nothing to do with the Spirit. I think it's obviously 'yes,' but I don't think everyone agrees with me here.

My gut is that music in film opens up a channel to our emotions and that what we feel there is not God. (Now these are all very vague issues, and describing them in words will always fall short. Nevertheless, I consider it a worth while effort.) If what I wrote above is true, that sweeping music elicits an emotional, not spiritual response, then does that mean that music alone never
elicits a spiritual response? Is it always emotional?

I think that some of our responses to the questions asked about the Spirit and art are responses about emotions, not about the Spirit. But why would I think that my experiences with the Spirit would qualify me to dictate what yours could be? I know a few things that are on my mind about this distinction, and I know my experiences. I'll share those and I'd really appreciate if you would share yours.

1. That Romans 8:16 says: "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God"
In this verse, there are two spirits being talked about: The Spirit of God, and the spirit of us. Big 'S', little 's'. And both of them are 'bearing witness.' That is something amazing in my mind. Did YOU know that YOUR spirit could testify? I don't know the terms, procedures, or requirements for this, but it is worth noting.
I don't believe that I even know what it would be to elicit a spiritual response, but the doctrine in this verse is key to understanding it, I am convinced. I don't believe that it is the same thing as our emotions bearing witness.

2. I know that our emotions and our spirits are very closely linked. Nephi wrote that he began to cry more as he became more 'spiritually in-tune' with the Lord (how's that for a phrase with a LOT of topical baggage.

3. I believe that the distinction might best be described by looking at the order of our meetings. The hymn always comes before the prayer/ordinance. The spiritual experience (the connection with God) comes after not during the hymn. The hymn's purpose is to prepare for, not replace, the Spirit.

The idea is that after we have alerted our senses, we will be more receptive to God's presence and His counsel.

That way, our reaction to the preparation (intellectual as well as emotional) is based on taste, culture, training... and I don't know that our receptiveness to the Spirit is influenced by those factors.

4. I know that sometimes I have been given direction as a result of a piece of art. I felt things as I pondered the work (could I have said experienced? I'm really not sure. But it would have to be an active verb). My interaction with a piece of art was always active rather than passive if I was received any divine direction. I know that that is not emotion. It is from outside of both me and my biology.

However, I know that the Spirit does not only speak this way to us. It sometimes primarily a Comforter. That does not require direction.

These are the biggest conclusions I've come to on my own, and I would greatly appreciate you to share yours.

Please tell me: Can the Spirit be in a Work of Art?

My initial reaction would be 'no,' because to say such a thing would suggest that the Spirit is something which can be manipulated by man. How absurd.

But there are so many discussions where Mormons seem to say that the Spirit is not in a work of art, one might be led to believe that that is an exception to the rule. I believe that my heart has been in the right place while viewing a film or painting (rarely while reading a book other than scripture, but often afterward as I pondered it) and I've felt a confirmation of something or even revelation that expounded upon a seed planted or even just suggested by a work of art. But does that mean that the spirit is in the work of art? I don't believe it does.

But I feel, for the lack of a better word, the presence of divinity as I read scripture and it calms and heals me (how often I need it!). Does this mean that it is with in the scriptures, or is it actually the act of obedience to read them which does it?

While tear-jerkers do not bring the Spirit, I will admit that I have had spiritual... enlightenment spurned by epic emotional films... films I returned to with disgust, but whose first viewing brought life-changing decisions.

So I ask you, what your experiences are.

Web Criticism

David Bordwell, as usual, has taken an optimistic stance where everyone else seems to have only seen doom. Commenting on the state of film criticism in light of the intense and rapid decline of print film criticism (which might as well be called paid film criticism) as well as the increase of Web-based criticism. He provides an engaging and intelligent-as-always foundational meditation/how to distinguish and write better film criticism. I'm including a link here, in part because I think it's important (I don't think we realize how entirely our world is changing), and in part because I'm looking for contributors to this blog. Anyone can contact me if you're interested at towardanldscinema at gmail dot com, and we'll see what we can rig up.

This is a niche audience and a niche topic, but an important one, and we have much to learn yet about how and what we can do.

The difference between good and evil

I've been spending a great deal of time on a post on Chaplin's The Great Dictator ever since we were on the temple trip last week with the Polish members, but I have so much to say that isn't quite coming out as I'd like, so I've moved on to a few other posts to allow some distance.

One thing that seems to be at the center of my thoughts for an 'LDS cinema' is the construction of 'right' and 'wrong,' as has been manifest by many previous posts. Do we follow a Star Wars/Joseph Campbell archetypal definition of the two or a Miyazakian/Iranian model with a an absolute refusal to demonize or polarize in any direction? (Might I add, again, that the second model is for children primarily.)

I've also decided to re-read Jonathan Rosenbaum's work for the Chicago Reader starting at the beginning, and currently I'm in the January 1990 section on his new website. This, of course, contains his top ten for the year. In that list are two passages that triggered something in me on the topic and present one important side of my dilemma—I cite them for you here.

The first, is under A Short Film About Love—a lengthened version of my least favorite of the ten parts of (arguably) Kieslowski's greatest achievement, The Decalogue. Though his writing on the film is worth reading, this passage says nothing of it, but discusses morality of representation:

Like the other self-sufficient installments in the Decalogue that I’ve seen, A Short Film About Love is in fact centrally concerned with a highly sophisticated moral ambiguity–a distinguishing trait of the contemporary Polish cinema that could also be noted this year in Agnieszka Holland’s flawed but powerful To Kill a Priest as well as Andrzej Kotkowski’s Citizen P. Unlike the first-grade ethics of a Crimes and Misdemeanors, which can’t see beyond either the notion of good guys versus bad guys or the self- absorption of the three characters it is ostensibly attacking, Kieslowski and Holland are interested in the complex intricacies–the paradoxes, contradictions, and cross-purposes–that figure in ethical choices.

Now, I don't think Crimes and Misdemeanors is aiming at morality, and to view it only in these terms is short-sighted, but the distinction is well-worth noting. In this light I am more inclined to the "complex intricacies–the paradoxes, contradictions, and cross-purposes–that figure in ethical choices" which factor into Kieslowski's Decalogue (which doesn't factor into all of his films, in my opinion), because those complexities are the things that my moral, ethical, and spiritual life are riddled with.

The second citation comes from his description of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing (maybe the greatest film about race in America ever made, in fact I can't even think of a runner-up):

Practically the only American movie this year that stimulated extended, in-depth discussion about anything other than just movies, Spike Lee’s energetic portrait of a day in the life of the inhabitants of a Bedford-Stuyvesant block breaks with the Hollywood mainstream by doing away with the moral certainties represented by heroes and villains. In addition to representing a quantum leap over Lee’s previous features, this highly entertaining and provocative feature addresses contemporary racial issues in a manner that startlingly respects the ability of viewers to think for themselves.

In contrast to the stacked decks that generally accompany most Hollywood “problem” pictures, which typically divvy up the antagonists in racial conflicts into separate piles labeled “us” and “them,” Do the Right Thing discovers a way of addressing a varied audience in such a way that no single viewpoint provides a skeleton key for comprehending the action in all its implications. The motto of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, “Everyone has his reasons,” applies here not only to the separate perspectives of the pizzeria owner (Danny Aiello), his delivery boy (Lee), his two sons (Richard Edson, John Turturro), three alienated malcontents (Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, Roger Guenveur Smith), two elderly outsiders (Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis), and three comic kibitzers (Robin Harris, Frankie Faison, Paul Benjamin), among others, but also to the separate legacies of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X that are evoked at the movie’s end. Theoretical pluralism has often played a substantial role in American movies, but genuine pluralism pushed so far that it actively determines narrative structure is a rarity, and Lee’s comedy-drama provides a bracing model for how this can be done.

This 'stock piling' tradition, from my point of view, might have the advantage of clarity and comprehension (perhaps appropriation), but I don't remember clarity ever being the issue in any of Spike Lee's pictures, and this one is no exception. The fact that it "discovers a way of addressing a varied audience in such a way that no single viewpoint provides a skeleton key for comprehending the action in all its implications" seems integral to what is missing from modern commercial cinema (which many 'Mormon movies' take most of their cues from). It seems to me that Renoir's view is the pinnacle of Christianity in practice.

However, after such a conversation with my father-in-law this week, a man whom I respect and have respected much longer that it was my obligation to do so, he reminded me that there is a great need to define and teach what evil is, and how to distinguish it. I am committed to this, though I don't know how to do so in a Christian manner. For the most part, demonization (as discussed in the post about Rambo) is the only way movies seem to be doing this. I am also convinced it is the very thing we need to avoid. But what else is there? How do we define this? What movies are doing this without condemning unjustly?

I have included a link to my father-in-law's blog on the side because those bits of wisdom are integral to what we should be doing in film in my opinion. Leading Families

J. Hoberman

I admit that I have not read as much of J. Hoberman's writings as I would have liked to (I try to get caught up in the Voice at least once a month, though most discussion of the Village Voice over the past several months has centered on Nathan Lee and his recent firing and what it means in terms of the future of film criticism), but I have always left appreciative for the new perspective, his keen eye, eclectic tastes and sheer passion for things that I might otherwise not have noticed. I have only truly read one of his anthologies, though I have picked others over with great fulfillment. True, his tastes are often more 'crass' (whatever that more might truly mean) than my own (he has written extensively on the achievement of Cronenberg's Crash and listed Borat among his top ten for last year), but no one among American film critics has encouraged interest in Bill Viola's work or Eastern European cinema (an obvious taste we share, though I am less and less tolerant of Wajda's work) than Hoberman. But it is his eclecticism and listmaking I wished to mention in brief here.

I include links on the side bar here more for my own use than anyone else's, but I wanted to encourage the perusal of these mini canons for the use of Latter Day Saints interested or devoted to Film as a medium. I wish only to list here his list from 1985:

01. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
02. Standard Gauge (Morgan Fisher)
03. Allonsanfan (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)
04. The Ballad of Social Dependency (Nan Goldin)
05. Himatsuri (Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
06. After Hours (Martin Scorsese)
07. Patakin (Manuel Octavio Gomez)
08. Tosca's Kiss (Daniel Schmid)
09. Chambre 666 (Wim Wenders)
10. Lost in America (Albert Brooks)

First I will admit that I have only seen three of these and heard of four of them. But I was impressed by the extreme diversity of film embraced here: any list which simultaneously contains both Claude Lanzmann's 550 minute magnum opus on the Holocaust and American stand-up-turned-filmmaker Albert Brooks' first feature is something to be mentioned.

I simply wanted to call attention to these lists and what we might learn from them.

If nothing else, I might hope that our trips to the theater or Amazon or netflix or local film library might be more thoughtful and informed.

Ode to Nick Nolte/ On being 'Priesthoodly'

A memory that has had a surprising impact on me was when I was a priest (about 17 years old). Our Stake President was visiting our ward that day. As he walked by me on his way out of the chapel after the meeting had ended, I happened to be lying on the bench. He remarked to my Bishop that I wasn't behaving 'very priesthoodly.' The phrase has stuck in my mind for these years— perhaps partly due to the oddity of the word— but none the less creating a need to define that word. What does it mean to behave in a 'priesthoodly' manner. Somehow my thoughts on the matter have turned to Nick Nolte.

Why have I dedicated a post to Nick Nolte? Has he passed away? No, though I do feel some urgency in what I have to say about him.

I've been thinking about him since a conversation with a friend a few summers ago where Ang Lee's Hulk came up (a movie which, though deeply flawed, we both thoroughly enjoy). My friend mentioned Nick Nolte as one of the great parts of the film, while I thought of his performance as overwrought and lacking variation or depth. But my friend, whose opinion I greatly respect, re-asserted Nick Nolte's greatness.

Since I was little, when one of my favorite movies was The Three Fugitives where Nick Nolte and Martin Short played opposite each other, I have considered myself a fan. But I have recently been deeply moved by two of his performances in particular Olivier Assayas's Clean, and the Terrence Malick produced The Beautiful Country. In both features Nolte's character could hardly be considered the leading role, but at the end of each it is his performance which stayed with me.

In academics as well as popular criticism actors are rarely discussed in comparison to the roles behind the camera. Partly because it's so difficult to pinpoint, partly because it's so difficult to discuss, but this doesn't lessen the role actors play. Since I read Dave Kehr's entry on Charleton Heston a few weeks ago, I've been trying to reevaluate this, reflecting on careers of great actors like Brando and Nicole Kidman especially. I feel like I've gained a new pair of eyes
and its with these eyes that Nolte's performances hit so deep.

Those performances of Nolte's seem to have everything with the priesthood. For some years, I've been concerned for various reasons about the state of masculinity in our ever-changing modern world. I've said it many places but I'll mention it here that I feel that Edward Albee's American Dream trilogy (as I refer to it: The Sandbox, The American Dream, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?) to be the most important piece of American literature that I know of. It has everything to do with the priesthood, I believe. The structure of these plays is similar (as it is with many of Albee's works such as the more known A Delicate Balance): A domineering wife and mother, an ineffectual, passive, and frustrated father and husband whose marriage is defined by abuse, neglect and dysfunction. The child is either non-existent or heartless and impotent, while sometimes a grandmother is featured and the only voice of wisdom. They paint a picture of a 'post-feminist' world, where fathers are no longer the head of the household because they are unable, and the mothers rule in anxiety and tyranny. This all, like Miller's masterful Death of a Salesman, is tied to the death of accomplishment, of the American Dream, of the future generations.

On the other hand, images of masculinity like Scorsese's paint masculinity as violent vigilantes, incapable of true intimacy or fidelity let alone lasting happiness. Which leaves us with men and patriarchy as evil on both fronts. Either slothful and ruled by fear, or violent and ruled by fear. A pretty bleak picture all around.

Yet Nick Nolte's performances here seem to answer all of this.

In Clean, a film I deeply love for its subtlety and masterful direction, Nick Nolte is Maggie Cheung's (of fame In the Mood for Love fame in the US, as well as Assayas' former wife) father-in-law after a tragedy has occurred. Nolte's choices as an actor make not only for a more engaging performance, but for a clearer, less marginalized view of masculinity. There is wisdom and concern in his every gesture which plays off his natural 'gruffness' and stoic demeanor. In this role he embodies paradox and the qualities I believe define being "priesthoodly": he is quiet, dignified, not puffed up, devoted, humble, hard-working, determined yet considerate, willing to adapt, yet firm without anger, cheerful and calm, naturally searching for the positive. I hope that as the years continue to come that I might be the type of man portrayed here. I would trade the last twenty minutes of this film for every one of Scorsese's pictures. I hope I wouldn't have to, because there are moments of sheer genius in Scorsese's oeuvre, but if put to it, I would. But these are qualities aided by the script, but created, I'm convinced, by Nick Nolte. What kind of life has he lived that he knows such things. Might our films be greater if we knew these things better as well?

The next performance is even stranger to mention, since though Nolte's picture is on the cover of the DVD case, he appears for the first time less than 15 minutes before the end of the picture. Here again, he plays a father, but more detail might affect the viewing of any who haven't yet seen it. But, again, I would trade these 15 minutes for hundreds of other films. A 15 minute role in a minor, yet thoughtful production hardly qualifies actors for awards, but this might be the best piece of work I've seen from an actor for years.

Patriarchy is at the very heart of what our church stands for. Without the patriarchal order, not only is the church not true, but neither is the gospel. This was a hard thing for me to accept (and I guess at points, it still is) because so many male figures in media and my life alike, are either ineffectual, or tyrannical. If me lying on a bench for a moment was unpriesthoodly, than these two images most certainly are. But that these two extremes are characteristic of what men are and should be is a lie and I am convinced its source is darkness. Patriarchy is not tyrannical, though its use has been in more instances than can be mentioned here. How much evil has been committed by men who justified their works by power!

But there men who defy tyranny by their ability to love and love as Christ would. There are men whose concern is the good of others and who fight everyday for their families— to protect and provide. Might this be more urgent to discuss in our literature and our film than searching for the next "Mormon teen crush'? I just want to say that I struggled with this, especially as I've been more aware and concerned with how women are undermined by male-driven systems. And I know that I am talking about very big issues, and using very small words, but I also know that the order of God's church, and the order His church teaches about families, is the order he has designed and ordained. And I know that's His way because I questioned and I have now got my answer. I guess what I'd like to say is, that if you haven't got yours, keep searching, and it will come.

I recently read a post and dozens of comments on Feminist Mormon Housewives on a post entitled "On Patriarchy and Patriarchs" that discusses this perception. I was extremely impressed with the thoughtful nature of so much of the writing there, but many other comments testified of pain and frustration on the topic. I know that this is a sensitive and difficult topic, and I hope nothing I've written here betrays that. I feel that a large part of the responsibility to discuss and cultivate these topics lies on LDS cinema.

Let us take these performances as models and again, be more thoughtful in our media.

Morality, Rambo, and Brother Brigham's quote

There have been delays between posts for several reasons (my recent illness, visa problems for my wife and daughter, etc). But I've also realized that I've been making some increasingly outrageous assertions lately that I'm not sure I have the right or the clarity of mind to make. So I'd like to take a step back and ask some more questions.

These 'assertions' that I'm hesitant to make stem from what it means to be a 'Latter-day Saint' aesthetically on the one hand and morally on the other — what ways this is expressed in film as well as its definition, not to mention what an 'LDS' morality might be.

It is in the spirit of the second that I approach this post.

There are a few citations that are on my mind and I'd like to start with those before I start framing them:

The first is the quote often shared and mentioned but rarely (or perhaps never) discussed from Brigham Young. It reads:

Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnamity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to sun it (Discourses of Brigham Young, p.243; Bookcraft, 1998)

The next is the discussion of good and evil we find in the scriptures. There is no gray area as far as they are concerned. The end of Omni 1:25 reads: "for there is nothing which is good save it come from the Lord: and that which is evil cometh from the devil." There are many such references, this just happened to be one I had at my fingertips.

The next thought comes from the first time I read Alma 30. It was at a time in my life when I was trying to fix a lot of things, or, I guess, I had just recently fixed a lot of things and I was trying to grow out of the afterbirth, so to speak, of that change. I remember reading the story of Korihor and being moved to tears mourning his loss. I didn't hate him, and I don't believe that it is possible to hate him if you read the account in the spirit with which it was written. I identified with him (for lack of a better, less-encumbered, less-Freud-laden word). That experience did more for me as a young man, new to this blessing called repentance, than I have words to express. I can remember no such experience with melodrama.

The next is the chapter of 2 Nephi 2. While I won't cite the whole chapter, I will say that it is the greatest treatise on the most morally complex narrative that I know of, namely Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden. Despite the fact that the binary for good and evil is still stark and consistent with all scripture, ("[men] are free to choose liberty and eternal life {which is then linked to the Savior}..., or to choose captivity and death {which is then linked to the devil}"), there are other more complex binaries presented so that the whole picture can no longer be viewed in a two-dimensional table. The most shocking and perhaps the most important to our discussion (as well as our understanding of the garden narrative) is at the very end of verse 15 which I will quote in full:

"And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter." (Italics added for emphasis.)

In the verse we read that this opposition which is so important in man's progression is brought to a head, as it were, by the two trees discussed in the garden. The forbidden fruit (which comes from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) in opposition to the fruit of the tree of life (the same discussed by Lehi earlier in his vision, as well as by Alma in chapter 12 and at the end of chapter 32). I have assumed that the fruit of the tree of life is to be considered sweet and the forbidden fruit to be considered bitter. Though I see that the converse could be argued effectively, I'll save such a discussion for another time.

The reason this binary challenges such a two-dimensional morality as we might understand it earlier, is that both trees are equally essential to our eternal progression. And not only this, but it is this very chapter that explains this principle. As far as I know, there is no other document which explains and expounds upon this concept. Yet it simultaneously presents them as being in opposition to one another and being mutually dependent on the other. Mutually dependent, mutually oppositional, equally essential. There is no room for black and white morality here. If we are only able to think this way, the gospel will be filled with confusion and contradiction, as will this narrative from the Garden.

Finally, I think of Rambo, or First Blood I should say. I mention this movie partly because it is one that my saintly mother-in-law secretly loves and partly because my wife and I recently broke down and watched it not long ago. When my mother-in-law is confronted with the disparity of how the most loving and non-violent of women (she is truly saintly) secretly loves a favorite of TBS's 'Movies for Guys who love Movies,' she blushes and defensively says that it is because he didn't do anything to them. "He didn't deserve it." Indeed she's right. First Blood is the epitome of what Brigham Young was talking about as far as character portrayal: The law is evil personified, and Rambo is good personified. Only according to President Young's quote, the consequences for evil and good must also be included in the text, which doesn't occur specifically here (even though Rambo gets the sequels and the police don't).

But one thing is sure about the film: the law is demonized and Rambo is idealized. There is not one positive trait shown for the "bad guys" and not one negative trait shown for Rambo.

So now for my conclusions.

First, anyone who suggests that filmmakers who "just tell a story that might have happened somewhere, sometime" have no moral obligation beyond telling that story is either naive or in denial. No movie can be mistaken for reality. It is, at best, a perception of reality. Along with that understanding comes the responsibility to realize how our perception of reality affects the telling of those stories. First Blood could have been told another way. The filmmakers chose which character traits to include and which to exclude. That is a decision that directly affects the morality of the story.

Next, as far as I've experienced in my mortal probation, the good are rarely rewarded as they expect and evil is rarely punished as we'd hope. In fact, I even feel to some degree that when I am trying to do what's right, things get more difficult. It seems that this perspective has come from my knowledge of the gospel and it's eternal perspective. Yet Brigham Young, who knows far more about the gospel than I do, suggested that viewing characters who embody good or evil and who get the rewards of their evil or good would aide the pulpit. I'm resisting the temptation to discard a prophet's input, but this situation is very confusing. True, his counsel was descriptive and not prescriptive, but I still have a hard time agreeing with the description. And so I have no conclusion as of yet.

There is a thin line, however, which I'm not prepared to define yet, between the complex morality we find in films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a film wrought with contradiction so much that I can't quite get my head around it, and moral relativism or even when the mention of the words "good" and "evil" seem out of place. I know that it is mainly fear that drives those words from our moral discourse as well as from our storytelling and our aesthetic discussions. However, it is also fear that causes us to use those words too quickly, to rush in and judge harshly.

The morally complex films of Terrance Malick and Jia Zhang-Ke, which refuse to judge their characters (precisely because every character, no matter how small the role, is morally intricate) present both a challenge and an answer to that fear. I don't believe that either filmmaker's work could be called morally relativistic (especially Jia Zhang-Ke) because even though each character is far from being clear-cut, the film is always challenging us morally.

Perhaps the best answer, however, might be the films of Anthony Mann. Mann's westerns, by nature, have a clear sense of good and evil, but each character is nuanced and their own senses of morality are constantly evolving, thus challenging my own flawed sense of morality. I consider the westerns of Anthony Mann to be some of the most morally complex of the genre and of any American film I know. Truly he is one of the greats. It is this morality which seems to go in line with the compassion that I remember Korihor being described with. There is always a clear sense of right and wrong, but the characters are so nuanced, and the text's perception of them is so unassuming, that we are challenged. The character's complexity doesn't fit easily in to the film's clear cut, uncompromising morality.

But what other conclusions can or should be drawn?

Elder Ballard's address on politics media and the church

I just came across this address and I find it not only fascinating, but extremely important. I wanted to share a link from here since I consider it to be valuable to every part of the discussion we are having here.

Elder Ballard.

Two obituaries

I just wanted to include links to two thoughtful responses to two recent passings in film history.
Dave Kehr on Charlton Heston and David Bordwell on Paul Arthur.

The Greatest Cinema Ever — General Conference

Though I've not fully recovered, I've been out of the hospital for a little more than a week. I've had my first migraines ever and I'm extremely tired all the time. But we decided that we couldn't afford to miss conference, so we made the trek and imposed on our good friends Magda and Darek (among others) in Warsaw so we could enjoy conference. We are incredibly thankful to them not only for their hospitality and care for us, but because both of them have intense responsibilities due to translating and interpreting conference (something I, thank goodness, am no longer eligible or responsible for) on top of their already strenuous lives with 80-hour weeks and extremely little sleep. So it is with some guilt that I write what I have to say. Our schedule allows us much freedom and I even missed the only true obligation I've had to the University here because I've been feeling weak. But this conference was something I will never forget.

True, I can't say I saw much. The monitor was small for a room filled with so many people, and much of the time I had to be watching our daughter (though I gave way to my neglected and over-worked wife toward the end). But with that being said, there is nothing that compares to this experience in my mind. To be, as Elder Holland so aptly coined, 'eye witnesses' to that mantle distilling on President Monson, is an experience I will treasure always.

I hope that it doesn't appear that I've over-extended my description here. I don't believe I've overstated it. Perhaps it is simply because of how starved I have felt, or how weak physically, but there has yet been nothing to compare to it.

It even seemed that the zooming and editing was brought down a notch, though I can say this with little accuracy as the only session I truly saw was the last one, after our daughter had gone to sleep at 10 pm Sunday night, Poland time. And for all my angst toward Mack Wilberg as an icon and musician, I was shocked at how much calmer the musical decisions were. Almost without anxiety. But this, perhaps, might be due to a humbler me.

But what a glorious experience to hear the words of living prophets and oracles of God. If it is not going too far, I would like to take a moment and just add my witness that those men are called of God and that they speak for him because they have His Spirit and His authority, and they bring and have brought His teachings to us. I will defend that to anyone who does not know it. I have no doubts about that and I know it is true.

Many things are changing. Many things are vibrantly changing in the Church and I'm glad that we know their source.

I don't desire to make this too personal, but I feel I must say something more on a personal note. I have been uncomfortably surprised at how important a place President Hinckley held for me. I say 'uncomfortably' because, though I received an undeniable witness as to his calling and his place in God's Kingdom, I was shocked at how his death has affected me. I have felt extreme loss at his passing, so much so that it affected my hearing of this session. But I suspect that I am not the only one because testimonies of President Monson's place kept coming. I mention this mainly for disclosure — I am definitely among those who were in need of those numerous yet powerful testimonies.

But on to the point. Since I'm arguing that watching this General Conference is better than watching any film, I need to mention what it is I think watching does films does for us. I believe a great film challenges us morally and it becomes a changing, bettering experience.

Maybe we might do better to think of General Conference as the great movie of our faith. Everything about it might teach us something about ourselves, our capacities, our culture and traditional expectations. To be sure, the watching of conference is a learned skill. Five or four two-hour sessions over a period of two days is a strain on the untamed attention span. No matter who the speakers or how long they speak, listening intently for the full time is not an easy task for beginners. It takes time to become accustomed. But to my mind, there is nothing greater.

Though we could argue that the different form of sustaining was an inciting incident and President Monson's final talk was the denoument, this conference couldn't really be described in narrative terms without forcing them on it. There were major characters, some we identified with more and some less (depending on who 'we' is). But in the end, it is an entirely different beast and should be treated as such. But might not our narratives be richer and more full of the Spirit if we took note from General Conference?

Now I've done my fair share of shopping around for grad schools, and everyone seems to separate themselves (both those who liked my application and those who didn't) from the other schools by the exact same thing: they all claimed to focus on narrative, on 'telling story.' What an abstract and inevitably unhelpful distinction, in my opinion. It seems to me that in order to be true to what our culture and religion creates, 'telling story' cannot be our only concern. I'm not even sure if it can be as major as film markets dictate. Scripture, sacrament meetings, and conference all rely heavily on narrative, but in none is 'story' the end goal. It is always a means to an eternal end. Before coming to Poland, I had a priesthood blessing where I was blessed that I would be able to discern between those things which were of eternal significance and those which were not. I can't say that I know how or if that blessing has been fulfilled as of yet, but I know that I have been impressed by the phrase and it has stuck with me.

Maybe LDS filmmaking might take a turn for the better if we organized our movies in the way that these conferences are organized — around sincere people with sincere messages that they desire deeply to share with everyone who will listen, with the sole purpose of improving our culture, our lives. What would happen if our 'narratives' were constructed in such a way so that each character spoke with authority but also concern for bringing peace and truth to each person within earshot. Is media being made like this besides General Conference?

I had hoped to say more about the messages (for instance, do we appreciate how bold and brave and delicate Elder Scott's address was? We shall be speaking of it for years, as we did of Elder Ballard's 'Raising the Bar' address, I think), but I will finish what I started about it challenging our morality. This is only one small observation, but I would like to share it to illustrate how morally complex the conference as a whole was. From a structuralist point of view, we could view the messages in terms of binaries. From church addresses, one might expect moral simplicity in this view: good—bad, black—white, heaven—hell, obedience—disobedience. Under the slightest scrutiny however, one discovers an LDS world view is quite the opposite. I would like to say that, to the best of my recollection, the word 'tolerance' was used three times: Once by President Monson, once by President Uchtdorf, and once by Elder Amado, I believe. President Monson said that "evil often wears the Halloween mask of tolerance," obviously calling tolerance a guise for evil. Yet President Uchtdorf and Elder Amado denounced intolerance. Same conference, same Church, led by the same Spirit, yet a very complex view on one simple concept. Neither contradicting the other but each expanding the other's statements. We can't be satisfied to think that tolerance or intolerance is always good or always bad. These things are always complex and they always require discernment and the Spirit of the Lord.

It is also this moral complexity that we find in the scriptures every day (how often Moroni phrases something differently than Nephi or Alma, not to mention Paul), yet we might do well to notice this as lacking in LDS film. If it is not always lacking, it has not reached the point at which we find it in the scriptures or in General Conference.

It is the very nature of the sincerity-driven, second-person medium that General Conference is that allows for this complexity, for talks like Elder Holland's, Elder Christofferson's, and Elder Scott's, as well as the humor and profound simplicity that made Elder Ballard's talk perhaps his most touching and memorable. But I'm now of the opinion that LDS cinema could learn more from General Conference than from any other media the church has previously produced.