Habitus Movie Blog

The new Superman movie has caused a tense debate about its Christian content. Here is a few relevant stories for you to explore.

Is the new Superman meant to be Jesus?
Is the Superman Returns movie meant to remind us of the Bible? And if so, is it blasphemy?

This question is asked by BBC News

The Kryptonian Gospel
'Superman Returns' presents a gospel story as moving as 'The Passion of the Christ'--and possibly more affecting.

Read the movie review on Beliefnet

The passion of Superman
"Superman Returns," opening today, is one of the most clearly Christological allegorical movies ever made. It is so clear that it even has a discussion about the world's need for a savior.

Dr. Ted Baehr writes at World Net Daily

The Second Coming of Superman
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, wait ... it’s Jesus! At least that’s what some Christians are seeing in the long-anticipated “Superman Returns,” which flies into theaters this week, after decades of failed attempts at sequels.

Annabelle Robertson gives you more at Crosswalk

As it turns out it is an old discussion. Journal of Religion and Film had an article about Superman and Jesus in 2002:

Holy subtexts abound within the popular cinema. Superman: The Movie (1978) and Superman II (1981) were examined as a protracted secular analogue of the Jesus story. The literature was reviewed and twenty Superman-Jesus parallels plus eight Christic personalistic traits were explicated. It was concluded that Superman is not only a legitimate Christ-figure, but the American pop culture movie Messiah.

To my knowledge the Superman caracter was invented by two Jewish boys in 1938. Can anyone confirm this?

Radu Mihaileanu is a director born in Romania and living in France for 20 years now. Saturday night at TIFF 2006 Radu Mihileanu spoke in front of a full-house public in “Republica” cinema, much to the delight of a somewhat spoiled Romanian crowd, having three Romanian cineasts winning prizes at major film festivals. We spoke to Radu Mihaileanu about his big hit “Va, vis et deviens”.

How much of your own experience as an immigrant is included in the movie?
Well, I didn’t live what the ethiopians have, I can say I can be compared to them only on a small scale. Of course, I left Romania in an almost cladestine way, as Shlomo in the movie did, but it never felt what he must have. I left Romania going on a “vacation” in Israel. The problem was I was supposed to leave for France afterwards, but the weather in Israel is different than in France. So, because there was a control at the airport, I could not take winter clothes in my luggage, so I wore them to Israel, this causing me to sweat the whole trip. And, of course, saying goodbye to my mom was difficult.

The story is a real one. Did you have great trouble documenting?
The documentation took me 5 years. During this time I had sometimes a rough time with some of the authorities, because a lot of details relating to the operation of bringing the Ethiopian Jews back to Israel were still classified, so I could not use it directly. Also, I didn’t want to be manipulated by the aythorities, so much of the political facts I had to double-check.

The script won a Cesar. You wrote the script by yourself?
I had the help of two great friends, one is present in the credits, the other is a professional writer , he helped us with the literary work. This script is now a book, because the story is much more dense and much longer than the one presented in the film; actually, this is a big problem, because the movie was ready, after the first editing, the movie was 3 and a half hours long. And something else: much of this Cesar here belongs to the people living the events in the movie, I was just the one to bring the story to you.

Considering the importance of the main character, Shlomo, did you have a rough time finding the three actors? (Shlomo is depicted in the movie in three stages of his life: 9 years old, 16 years old and 20 years old)
Well, the story was ready, the team was prepared, but we didn’t want to do anything without having the main actor, especially the little one. So, we dedicated 5 months for the casting. I’ve seen 1.500 children from Israel, but ellected from the orphans coming from Ethiopia, from Ethiopia and Burundi. We ended up with a small group, because the child had to learn also French, needed in the movie. In the end, what helped me a lot was the relationship developing between African children, where the eldest one plays the role of the big brother, helping the smaller one. So, I had almost an assistant director in the person of the third Shlomo, helping me get the best from the other two.

The technical aspects were hard and demanding?
We filmed in Ethiopia, Israel and France, so it was demanding. But the hardest part was the two days of filming in Ethiopia, with a tight schedule and an even tighter budget. I’m also a co-producer, so I was also interested about this aspect. The hardest scene was the one at the beginning of the movie, where Shlomo leaves his mother to go to Israel. We lost one day just to get this scene good, and we came close to not finish the film. Another scene was very difficult, the one in which Yael, the adoptive mother of Shlomo, licks Shlomo’s face to demonstrate he’s healthy. I had to lie to the actress in order to get from her the exact feeling I wanted.

How do you find Romania after 9 years?
It is the same welcomming space I know from my childhood in Bucharest. It’s now a European country and with events such as TIFF, its cinematography can develop easier and quicker.

Lucian Dragos

TIFF 2006: All The Unseen Children (co-production, d. Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, Katia Lund, Jordan Scott & Ridley Scott, Stefano Veneruso, John Woo, 2005).

During the first images of the movie there's RAI Production's logo, so this is mainly an Italian film, but directed, as you may read above, by directors from all continents. And indeed the stories are from all continents. At the front of the film there's also a mention that this film is for the benefit of Unicef. Personally, I was waiting for this kind of film for quite some time now, curious to see what comes up.

And very good things came up. First, the directors looked for a story inside their culture, all of them demonstrating they are very much inside that culture, they belong to it. This is to be seen in the fact that all stories speak about children and their struggle for life in all corners of the world.

"Tanza", the story by Mehdi Charef, brings to the public the life inside ethnic Africa, with civil wars, children used as combat forces. We follow a group of five children fully armed, killing mature soldiers and tacking villages at night to steal food. They loose one of their partners, the smallest one, but they keep on going. Arriving in the area of a very lively village, they decide to blow up the "institutions" of their enemy and to cut the head of their organization: meaning the school and the latrine. Tanza is the one to blow up the school, but inside he's remembering his life and takes a hard decision. This episode is filmed entirely in Burkina Faso, much to the wonder of the viewers, because the setting are as poor as they should be considering the subject.

Emir Kusturica is Emir Kusturica, a melange of music, sad story, irony and sadness surrounds his work in which he follows the life of a gipsy child who's taken institutionalized for robbery, but learns to do haircuts inside. While his family survives stealing, their little one is about to be released, but instead of happiness, he's feeling more
anxious than inside.

And for a good reason, his parents making him steal again and, in a grand finale, specific for Kusturica, our main character returns to the freedom, whatever that means.

Spike Lee is well-known for his independent views about the social issues, his view towards race and conflicts between races. In his story, "Blanca", he goes deep in the atmosphere of a family suffering from Aids, a family that still does not give up drugs. The family's daughter, Blanca, a brilliant 10 year old school-girl, finds out what their parents never told her: she is also sick. From here, Spike Lee takes us through the events developing before our eyes like a roller-coaster: Blanca overhears the discussion of her parents regarding her, discovers at school she's not wanted there, finds out her parents still do drugs. What gives us hope is the end, even if the end comes quicker for these people.

Maybe this is the best told story inside the film, because goes at a certain pace, we get to know and love the children and we are inside a South-American culture always appealing to Europeans. The story is by Katia Lund and is named "Bilu and Joao", a girl and a boy making a living by gathering recyclable materials. In the film we follow one day of their life, when they go on a hunt for metallic beer cans, iron bars, cardboard etc. They strike luck on some occasion, they loose some of the price because the cardboard is wet, they have a flat tire on their cart, but they manage to go all the way to help their parents, because the money they earn are used to buy bricks for their future home. A tasty corner of Brasil and its contrasts.

"Jonathan" is different from any other short films inside this production, because the film directed by Jordan Scott & Ridley Scott introduces the onyric vision in the story. We have a war-correspondent who's job is to bring news from the wars everybody runs from. But he's haunted by the image of all the children he has seen in the wars suffering, so he becomes also a child and goes through the same situations as these children. His companions are two childhood
friends. Jonathan lives a while the life of a 10 year old child, whose parents are dead, who lives in a forgotten train carriage, meeting children of the same age taking care of themselves and forming an utopic community. The return to maturity is never easy, but makes Jonathan wiser.

South Italy, Naples. Year: 2005. Beautiful scenery, impressive architecture, open-air concert, good life. Well, not quite. There's a drama about to unfold, whet two children steal a wealthy-man's expensive watch. "Mario" is a story about poverty, about the laziness of adults and of lost and regained childhood. These tough guys steal money to give
to their parents, some of them buy small motorcycles, but Mario uses some of the money to go on a roundabout and to light up the park just for him. A very well-placed note on the possibility of returning from this nightmare.

John Woo is known for his action movies bearing the mark of Hong Kong film industry. His short film also bears the mark of Hong Kong, but speaks about the poor people living in one of the most crowded areas in the world. We follow in parallel the story of a brilliant girl born in a high-society family and the life of a poor flower girl. The rich girl
has all a girl would want, but is often sad and depressed, because her parents are fighting over her custody. The poor girl was found by her father in a garbage can, raised by him and is never separated from her doll. The grandfather, as she calls him, dies, and the lonely girl ends up together with other girls in the custody of a man taking advantage of
them and making them sell flowers. All the images manifest a touch of Chinese meditation and nostalgia.

These short films have the gift of immersing the viewer into the life of children, a life often harder than the one of adults. They are the first to be sacrificed, they feel first the changes in equilibrium. This film has to be seen over and over again and to be continued.

Cluj-Napoca, a quarter to 7 p.m.: the hall of "Republica" Cinema (what an ugly name for a great cinema). Waiting for the official opening ceremony, important people present, exchanging the first impressions after the Festival opened in the morning with projections at the other cinemas involved in the festival.

The ceremony was held in the bastion of TIFF: "Republica" cinema is the most profitable single cinema in Romania (never part of a chain of cinemas). The organizers chose to present one of the greatest successes of the last years, the film by Corneliu Porumboiu "A fost sau n-a fost? ("12:08 East of Bucharest" Romania, 2006). The film won "camera d'or" and "label Europe Cinema" in Cannes Film Festival. With these great references, the public held its breath. During the ceremony, the festival director provoked the public, saying in Cannes the audience laughed a lot and gave a long reprise of applause at the end...

And so did we... The film speaks about the Romanian revolution (the name of the film can be translated literally "Was it or it was not?" remembering one of the most asked questions in all the TV talk-shows analyzing the Romanian anti-communist Revolution. It is not the first film speaking about the revolution or relating to the subject: Point Zero (Romania 1996, d. Sergiu Nicolaescu) or the documentaries ("Timisoara – December 1989", d. Ovidiu Bose Pastina and "Universitatii Square", 1991, d. Stere Gulea), but it is the first to investigate how simple, common people from a city lost in a rural area understand their role and the importance of the December Revolution 1989.

Like I said, we laughed, because the characters can be sometimes recognized during the local shows at some local TV station. We are immersed in the life of a lost small town, somewhere light touches the ground later than everywhere. Here, people are as common as everywhere, having the same prejudice and small sins as do any other. They revolve around tonight's TV talk-show, where they'll be answering the key-question: was there a revolution in our town?

For 40 minutes, Corneliu Porumboiu was actually a small TV station director, having to cope with a neurotic host of the show, too afraid not to say the wrong thing about someone, with an alcoholic teacher claiming he was in the town's square one hour before Ceausescu had fled and an old retired man, who used to play Santa Claus for virtually everyone in the city. In the meantime, we don't see him, but there's a clumsy cameraman, forgetting the camera in some corner or making stupid and deranging adjustments to the device.

The satire is total. First, it is the script that reaches to all the clichés related to the Revolution and there's also the beautiful play misenscene by all three participants in the show. Conclusions, fears, misunderstandings, debates, phones, papers, paper-clips, pens, all act so that we can feel estranged from the truth of the Revolution: it is just another day-to-day subject for a small-town TV show.

This is the first feature film of Corneliu Porumboiu and it is a great success. He will be present in Cluj-Napoca starting Wednesday and will meet with the public. Once again, this is a great representation singling out Porumboiu as one of the most promising, but in the same time one of the confirmed directors of the new wave in Romanian cinema.

Lucian Dragos
June 2nd, first day

Starting today, June 2nd and ending to June 10th, Transsylvania Film Festival becomes more and more a venue in an otherwise not so dynamic cultural environment of Cluj-Napoca. This year's edition is the fifth, so it's still a young festival.

Because it has been promoted as a festival for young people, TIFF's competition is open only to the young directors, meaning they must be at their first or second movie only. As with anything new, the first editions were a little bit funny, awquard at times, but the organizing team grew with every year and we can say last year's edition was a complete success.

There are voices saying this festival would be more welcomed and supported if it were in Bucharest, but the atmosphere surrounding it would clearly change. Which brings us to Cluj-Napoca and its cultural background. Situated in Center Romania in the province of Transsylvania, Cluj-Napoca has been and still is the financial, cultural and economical capital of Transsylvania. It is multicultural, multiethnical (four major ethical minorities) and ecumenical city. Its medieval architecture and cultural heritage makes Cluj-Napoca one of the most suited cities as host for a Film Festival.

During the first years of existance, the festival was surprising because its selection of movies, some of them earning the name of failures. But besides some unpleasant surprises, the festival stuck in people's minds and now is one of the major cultural events in Cluj-Napoca and Transsylvania.

The last two years were very promissing and so it seems about this year's edition. With the success of Romanian movies like "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" (d. Cristi Puiu) last year in Cannes, also this year prizes won by Romanian cineasts such as Corneliu Porumboiu ("12:08 East of Bucharest", 2006) or Romanian-born Radu Mihaileanu ("Vas, vis et deviens", 2004), and with the presence of young local directors like Catalin Mitulescu, TIFF announces to be more spectacular than ever.

Since the first year, the festival has more than one sections: competition, the main section, SuperNova, Special Events and Short Films. Special events are evenings dedicated to projections dedicated to the festival's public. There is also a "HBO night" featuring mini-series produced by the broadcasting company in marathon projections (last year the entire series "Angels in America lasted for almost 7 hours!).

The jury has five members this year: David Robinson, former film critic for London Times, director between 1989-1991 of Edinburgh International Film Festival, film hystiran; Anamaria Marinca, winner of Bafta Award for her role in "Sex Traffic"; Kornel Mundruczo, Hungarian director; Laufey Gudjonsdottir, director of the Icelandic Film Centre; and Radu Mihaileanu, Romanian-born French Director, his film "Va, vis et deviens" won a cezar Award for screenplay.

As the director of the Festival, Razvan Chirilov, declared, this year TIFF is setting another standard, both in quantity and quality. With so many films to choose from, this day-by-day job of keeping everybody well-informed is not just everybody's cup of tea...

Lucian Dragos