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

