A theater full of people and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest last evening. It was loads of fun -- just what I want in a summer movie: swordfights on varying obstacle courses, handsome good heroes, cheeky brave women, boldly drawn characters, dramatic music (Davy Jones organ), jokes to remind us of the first movie, creative monsters and a cliffhanger ending.
A group of us from church watched the first Pirates Sunday night then went together to see the second one Monday night. I joked on Sunday morning about the theological significance of the movie, but I suspect every movie has some sort of theological aspect. I'm going to try to eke one out of Pirates 2:
This movie, like many others, reminds us of the Faustian dangers of being so afraid of death that one 
will sell one's soul, or even a few years, to avoid it. Davy Jones goes around the seas searching for shipwreck victims and those who don't want to die are offered a job (100 years minimum, I believe) crewing his ship. The price they pay, besides violence and misery and a persistent life at sea, is that they slowly become crustaceans. Twenty years and they have barnacles on their faces; longer and they become barnacles.
Fear of death can destroy life. Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is so charming in these movies because he marches right off to do the right thing completely undeterred by what might happen to him. He is concerned only for those he loves. We'll see what happens to him in the third installment. (Fear of death is the force driving Voldemort's evil in the Harry Potter series, too. I imagine there is some element of it in Lord of the Rings as well. Yes, with the elves and with Sauron. Big bad guys, big fear of death going on.)
Fear of pain in love is the other side of failure and despair in this movie. Davy Jones is such a horrible creature because he has literally taken his heart out because of a (failed?) love affair. He couldn't face the pain of a broken heart, so he took steps that greatly diminished his humanity.
So, (too much) (how much is too much? can you tell me?) fear of death and fear of losing love is bad.
Now about that bird flu...
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Pirates movie -- bit of a spoiler
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6 comments:
Hooray! Now I'm not the only one doing theological reviews of movies! Maybe we should start a joint blog for this... more blogging! More!
Great review. Love the insights.
Thank you, Ironic, but if I quit putting movie comments on this blog I won't have so much to say.
One other thing about this (or just one other thing at this moment): the first movie showed the problem with not being able to die, as all the men who were cursed were not quite alive (able to enjoy anything) and they couldn't die. I was so worried in the first movie about what happened to Bootstrap Bill, unable to die at the bottom of the ocean. Now we know. But this movie seems to be, at some level, exploring the boudnaries of life and death and the goodness of each.
(In fact -- spoiler spoiler -- we are clearly going to be seeing more about death and resurrection in the next one. The ending was clear about that.)
One further question: if the men who had been cursed to not die were then uncursed and can now die (was that proven, anyway?) why doesn't the monkey die?
Because, silly, the monkey took a piece of the gold at the very end of the last movie. Now he's the only one with the curse. Oh, you do have to watch it clear through to the end of the credits to see that. Which I did. Because I'm such a loser geek. Heh.
I linked to your review from my site. I get dibs on being Siskel and Tillich.
Which reminds me, stay to the bitter end of this one too!
But before they all had it; was it because they all took the gold? Now its only because the monkey took the gold?
Are you sure we should let people see what we fine well educated pastors really talk about when we're together out here in public like this?
Fascinating. I knew Newsweek's review (not good) was probably wrong for me.
Sort of ironic that they have signed Keith Richards to play Johnny Depp's father in the the third installment. One look at him and I no longer fear death - I fear growing old and looking like him! Please, Lord, take me away before I turn into this.
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