2-BSide
4B —Thursday, November 9, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
The first song I learned on the piano was “Schindler’s Theme”
Mourning and Judaism:
Loss softened by family
Cinematic portrayals of mourning and the themes that prevail
Cruising for
Christianity
in this series, three daily arts writers in
varying states of mind visit the same
place and write about their experiences.
baked.buzzed.bored.
this week’s destination:
Holy fuck why is this so bad, caricature motherfucking Jesus. Tradition and the Hal-
loween costume famous guy sailor is so ficking Dumb, I think there’s a vagina in the wall.
It’s so far dipping into advertisement right now, oh my,? Oh my god this is so beyond any-
thing ever so indreibly badAHES TALKING TO HEFXELF this isnfucking campy, this
is an out of body experience. Do love marryiahe? Do you love finding cheesy white guts on
a coffee sh. Yo we gotta talk about how this show is bad, dude this is wcaryvof fucking YO
REAL QUICK LEMME DEVOTE 5 minutes TO THAT JOKE!!!!! NO HOMO let’s bring
that back it’s funky Yo shout out normies and they suburban asses. Mass drunk
would’ve rucking tense oh my god. Editing flops’ carrot to chocolate? Why
is there steak and cake? Are they at steak and shake what fucking kind
of shit eyes shut dude Gretchen wieners is in this fucking move-
ment Cher tweet What’s going on with my career? Holy
fuck thattweet is an out of Body experience k cannot
believe that this entire shit is real. God has left
us and all that is left is a guy missions and
a sad Gretchen Weiners. This is so
beyond anything what’s bet-
ter than this guys being
dudes???? Miss Weiners
needs to fuck all the way off
and I hate her so much she needs to
pick up this character yo this is getting
so racist I’m beyond. Everything lmfao Tay-
lor Swift this is the worst EVER Reputation will
be a commercial success, critical and artistic failure,
and will show a weaker side of country’s inability to show
any sort of range in theme. Yo god really is not here. She’s in
Mexico right now but it’s actually Hollywood basements and it’s.o
fucking crazy and mid if dad and it’s ficking scary how easily we can be
swayed. Television cultivates your world and that is why you must analyze
it in an arts column like the michigan daily. Imagine understanding the prin-
ciples behind art. You will control ya mind. This is full on nonsense CHECK OUT
THIS CHUNKY PASTEL PURPLE HELMET LOOKS MAMA this is so like sad and
poorly paced like oops I forgot to spread
My character development enough across the movie so I pack it into an unrealistic
conversation that waits on people Yo the synth of this music is mad sexy and sleek. The
movie watching has deteriorated and the balance of power has shifted away from the
movie. I am tranquil on the couch! Moses says let my people go! I am in search of the Holy
Spirit and a warm place to sleep and experience what it means to be on heroin and holy
fuck that movie was so awful.
—DAILY ARTS WRITER
We started with “Heaven’s Door” and ended with “Christian
Mingle The Movie.” Daily Arts presents: Cruising for Christian-
ity.
“Death is life’s way of saying you’re fired,” “Heaven’s Door”
Bold, brash and undeniably edgy.
Now onto the good stuff — “Christian Mingle (sometimes
promoted as Christian Mingle The Movie) is a 2014 faith-based
romantic comedy film written and directed by Corbin Bernsen
and starring Lacey Chabert as a woman who uses the website
ChristianMingle to meet a man. The film was released in the
United States on October 10, 2014 to VOD.” - Christian Mingle
The Movie’s wikipedia page
The dude who directed this is the dad in Psych and the
boss in it is Jack Barker from SIlicon Valley and this girl’s
internal monologue is straight out of Sex in the City but not
good because she’s dressed like a ten year old Hollister model
(think stitched t-shirt w a jean skirt and a rope and a CHUNKY
HEADBAND)
This movie is glaring with plot holes including: the main
character is not Christian, the male love interest strongly
resembles a Neo-Nazi, the Christian family dines over choco-
late chip cookies and lemonade, the female lead chose a picture
of herself in a CHUNKY HEADBAND as her profile picture
for her I have to say though they did a great job incorporating
multi-cultural themes including: a white woman explaining to
a white man different kinds of sushi, a team of white missionar-
ies going to an indeterminate town in Mexico to presumably do
service work but no one else is there besides the white people.
“I’m just more of a chili cheese dog sort of guy”
I took an hour off to play with a kitten. There’s zero resolu-
tion to this because I didn’t get resolution from this movie.
—DAILY ARTS WRITER
FILM NOTEBOOK
Last week I lit a yahrzeit
(remembrance)
candle,
exactly two years after my
grandmother’s
death.
In
Jewish tradition, one lights
a
candle
every
year
on
the anniversary of a loved
one’s passing. The candle is
supposed to symbolize life’s
fleeting nature and represent
the soul’s journey upwards. It
got me thinking about the other
mourning rituals in Judaism;
Ranging from the preciseness
with which the body is cleaned
to the strange tradition of
covering the mirrors while
sitting Shiva. These rituals,
while they may seem odd, are
essential in the process of
grieving. In search of a deeper
understanding of my religion’s
view of death, I turned to
film. I uncovered several films
that explicitly depict Jewish
mourning rituals, from sitting
Shiva in “This is Where I Leave
You,” to Jewish burial in “Son
of Saul,” to the mourner’s
Kaddish in films like “The Jazz
Singer,” “Schindler’s List” and
even “Rocky.”
Based on the book of the
same name, “This is Where
I Leave You,” follows the
Altman family, four siblings
who have grown apart through
adulthood and encountering
real-life struggles of their own.
Following their father’s death,
their mother (Jane Fonda,
“Grace and Frankie”) forces
them to live under the same
roof of their childhood home
for the week of Shiva. Starring
the likes of Jason Bateman
(“Horrible Bosses”), Tina Fey
(“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”),
Adam Driver (“Paterson”) and
Corey Stoll (“Ant-Man”) as the
Altman siblings, this dramedy
is centered on the Jewish ritual
of sitting Shiva. Sitting Shiva is
a tradition following the death
of a close relative in which the
family sits, literally, on low
stools or chairs for a week. In
this week, the family remains
in
one
location,
accepts
condolence calls and casseroles
and tell stories and memories
about the dearly departed.
“This is Where I Leave You”
teeters a fine line between
comedy and drama, basically
mirroring the complex feelings
of togetherness and loss that
Shiva accomplishes.
The Hungarian Holocaust
film “Son of Saul” (László
Nemes)
won
the
Academy
Award
for
Best
Foreign
Language
Film
in
2016.
The film follows Saul (Géza
Röhrig),
a
prisoner
in
Auschwitz whose job is to strip
and burn the bodies of the
murdered Jewish prisoners.
Saul discovers the body of a
boy he calls his son and swears
to give him a proper Jewish
burial from a Rabbi. The
terrifying and beautiful film
paints a harrowing portrait of
the human capacity for tragedy
and a father’s love. In the
concentration camps, life was
an everyday battle and death
was all around. Death was
imminent and unavoidable, yet
for the sonderkommandos like
Saul, death was a day job. The
act of purifying the darkness
of death is a core belief in
Judaism, that the dead remain
dignified, cleaned and clothed
before they are buried. For the
Jews in the Holocaust, there
was as little humanity in life as
there was in death.
The
mourner’s
Kaddish
is a special prayer recited by
the family members of the
deceased for the year following
their death. The prayer is
supposed to assist the mourner
in the mourning process, a
mode of reflection and a public
pronouncement of one’s grief.
Its somber notes are a universal
sign of loss. For example, Rocky
Balboa recites the Kaddish for
Mickey in “Rocky III.” Cantor
Rabinovitch (Laurence Olivier)
in “The Jazz Singer” says the
Kaddish as he disowns his son,
evoking a dramatic sense of loss.
In the last scene at the factory in
Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s
List,” Schindler declares three
minutes of silence for the
fallen. As he crosses his chest,
a voice screams from the crowd
the mourner’s Kaddish.
Jewish mourning rituals are
unique in the fact that they
are built on togetherness. One
cannot sit Shiva without family
or friends, the body before
burial must be watched by a
group of individuals and the
mourner’s Kaddish cannot be
said without the presence of
a minyan (quorum). Grieving
a loved one is a wound that
never truly heals, therefore,
we should support one another
in times of suffering. No one
should go through the pain of
loss alone.
WARNER BROS
It’s Jason Bateman ... with a beard
BECKY PORTMAN
Daily Arts Writer
Buzzed barges in at the strike of 9 o’clock and demands
we see “The Passion of the Christ.” I, unfortunately,
can’t adequately communicate how I’m not exactly
in the mood to watch a bleeding Jim Caviezel for
three hours. Alas.
Baked walks in and Buzzed emphatically
implores Baked to watch “The Passion of the
Christ.” “Fuck yeah” Baked slowly utters. I
mention it’s three hours long. Baked no lon-
ger seems amused. Alas.
After spending some time searching for
notably terrible spiritual dramas on Netf-
lix (and watching twenty minutes of other
drivel in the process), it’s as if some unex-
plainable divine force intervened in our
lives as Netflix suggested we watch “Chris-
tian Mingle The Movie.” Masochism is alive
and well in my social circle. Alas.
Save for the absurd plot holes (why a non-
Christian would immediately choose Chris-
tian Mingle to find love over the fucking obvious
choice of any other dating site that exists is beyond
me), the crippling stupidity that plagues the film’s
entire cast and dialogue stale enough to belong in sub-
urban Panera Bread dumpster, the experience could’ve
been worse. At least I didn’t spend three hours watching
my friends validate Mel Gibson’s work.
—ANAY KATYAL