Show Notes
Thomas Mirus and Nathan Douglas's mini-series on magisterial documents about cinema comes to a close with an episode covering the Vatican II era - specifically between 1963 and 1995, spanning the pontificates of Pope St. Paul VI and Pope St. John Paul II. This was, frankly, an era of decline in terms of official Church engagement with cinema. Where previous pontificates had dealt with film as a unique artistic medium, Vatican II's decree Inter Mirifica set the template for lumping all modern mass media together under the label of "social communications" - discussing them as new technology and social phenomena rather than as individual arts. That said, even if it leaves something to be desired artistically, boiling everything down to "communication" does result in some valuable insights. And every once in a while in this era, a pope would deliver a World Communications Day message specifically about cinema. Important themes in the documents from this time include: -Artists should strive for the heights, not surrender to the commercial lowest common denominator -Communication as self-gift -Film as medium of cultural exchange -JPII: "The mass media…always return to a particular concept of man; and it is precisely on the basis of the exactness and completeness of this concept that they will be judged." -The necessity to train children in media literacy so they can properly interpret, not be manipulated by, images and symbols -The role of critics Documents discussed in this episode: Vatican II, Inter Mirifica (1963) https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19631204_inter-mirifica_en.html Address of Pope Paul VI to artists (closing address of Vatican II, 1965) https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/speeches/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19651208_epilogo-concilio-artisti.html Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Communio et Progressio (1971) https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_pccs_doc_23051971_communio_en.html Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Aetatis Novae (1992) https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_pccs_doc_22021992_aetatis_en.html Pope Paul VI, First World Communications Day address (1967) https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/messages/communications/documents/hf_p-vi_mes_19670507_i-com-day.html Pope John Paul II, 1984 World Communications Day address https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/communications/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_24051984_world-communications-day.html Pope John Paul II, 1995 World Communications Day address on cinema https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/communications/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_06011995_world-communications-day.html SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: https://www.catholicculture.org/newsletters DONATE to keep this podcast going: https://www.catholicculture.org/donate/audio Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com
More from Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James and Thomas discuss the new film Fjord, a quiet but extremely tense drama based on the real-life case of a conservative Christian family from Romania who moved to Norway and had their children taken away by the Norwegian Child Protective Services, ostensibly for using light spanking to discipline their children, but seemingly motivated by anti-religious bigotry. Fjord won the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year, which angered many liberal critics because of the film's sympathies with the Christian parents against the repressive liberal bureaucratic state. DONATE to make this show possible! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: https://www.catholicculture.org/newsletters Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com
In the 1960s, the Soviet film industry decided to make an adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace that would blow any Hollywood epic out of the water. They gave it a virtually unlimited budget, with battle scenes using over 12,000 Soviet soldiers trained using the historical French and Russian drill manuals from the time of the war with Napoleon, using real period paintings and furniture borrowed from Russia's museums. The result was the most epic film ever made, divided into four installments taking over seven hours in total. But War and Peace has something more than a big budget and battle scenes on a mind-blowing scale. It is also one of the most creative and poetic films ever made, a very faithful adaptation of the novel yet using all the tools of cinema in the most unexpected ways to bring Tolstoy's vivid prose to life in scenes of dancing, hunting, dueling, love, betrayal, forgiveness, and spiritual awakening. Links Watch War and Peace for free on the official Mosfilm YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaTJrWP-PVcB-kpfOvzzp_7m4RdJPc0MC DONATE to make this show possible! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: https://www.catholicculture.org/newsletters
Thomas Mirus's keynote address at the first annual conference of the Thomistic Artists Guild, on May 30 at the parish of St. Vitus in Los Angeles, CA. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH5KBsOIz_Y Thomistic Artists Guild: https://thomisticartistsguild.org/ DONATE at http://www.catholicculture.org/donate/audio SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter http://www.catholicculture.org/newsletter
Nathan Douglas and Thomas Mirus review Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. It is not necessarily a bad thing if an adaptation doesn't reproduce the precise worldview of its source material - an artist makes his own work of art, not a scholarly translation. The movie is not a deliberate subversion of its source material, as many assumed. It is Nolan's honest personal reflection on what the poem means to him. But he does view the story through the lens of modern concerns which, while by no means false or unworthy of exploration or even totally incompatible with Homer's story, result in a less interesting version of Odysseus and a less coherent but overly didactic interpretation of the events depicted. Links Clip about diversity casting from previous episode https://youtu.be/5EEe-ogUXMI Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: https://www.catholicculture.org/newsletters DONATE to make this show possible! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio
James and Thomas begin a sub-series on the filmography of Andrei Tarkovsky (whose religious films Andrei Rublev and The Sacrifice they already discussed as part of the Vatican Film List). His first film, Ivan's Childhood, depicts a young boy, Ivan, who acts as a scout for the Russian army during World War II. Made precocious – and profoundly damaged – by his wartime experience, Ivan is a fascinating and tragic figure brought to life in a remarkable performance by Nikolai Burlyayev. Tarkovsky begins his career with a film that is understandably more conventional than the rest of his oeuvre – but still plenty unconventional, and in fact serving as a test run for Tarkovsky's poetic convictions. James and Thomas discuss the director's views on "poetic links" in cinema expressed in his book Sculpting in Time and instantiated in this film's dream sequences and evocative landscapes. Tarkovsky believed that poetry comes about when the objective beauty of reality is filtered through the artist's subjectivity, connected to his own personal associations and feelings, such that the authenticity and density of life somehow appear on screen, in a way that is truly poetic and allows the viewer to take part in the aesthetic experience of the artist. SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: https://www.catholicculture.org/newsletters DONATE to make this show possible! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com