IN SCHEMES BEGIN RESPONSIBILITIES: I have a post about the Great Brain books, over at Acculturated!

LETTING GO AND HOLDING ON: As we walked back from seeing Kid with a Bike, my friend and I passed a car with a bumper sticker reading, "I believe in unicorns, good men, and other mythical creatures." I joked that it was especially appropriate for the movie we'd just seen, a Belgian drama about a boy trying to find someone to parent him. But the movie isn't at all cynical or harsh. The kid is really lost and angry, and it's hard to watch him being rejected by his father, or remoraing himself to a hairdresser just because she was minimally kind to him once. The story is hard, and even the hope in its ending comes through the boy's defeat and resignation as well as through his foster mother's tender acceptance. Very, very recommended if it's playing near you.

"THE GUILTY CAN FORGIVE--THE INNOCENT TAKE REVENGE!" Before the first movie in the National Gallery of Art's Robert Bresson series started, we were warned that it was uncharacteristically melodramatic. Maybe that's why I liked it so much! I find Bresson's "mature" style emotionally battened-down to the point of catatonia, and it's really hard for me to get on board with his work, whereas in the early movie Les Anges du Péché (The Angels of Sin--!!!) I was totally engaged and found the characters and their dilemmas really compelling.

The movie takes place in a convent of nuns whose special charism is ministry to women in prison. Many of the nuns are ex-cons themselves. There's fierce Mother St. John, a hard-bitten but deeply humble lady who reserves her tenderness for her cat; well-meaning Anne-Marie, a daughter of privilege with all the self-involved stupidity privilege can breed, but also with a sort of springtime sunniness of nature which evokes empathy even as you want to shake her; Therese, a convict to whom Anne-Marie feels a special and intense pull; and the Mother Superior, working to exercise leadership in a hothouse world of gossip and point-scoring disguised as spiritual direction.

Therese, wrongfully convicted of a crime committed by her lover, speaks the line I used as the post title (which is a better way of describing my problem with Silent Hill, as well!), and the treatment of forgiveness in the movie is rich and insightful. The nuns' humility, pride, complicity, sincerity all come through clearly. The movie has a few noir touches or sequences but is mostly straightforward drama. If you like Dostoevsky and also nuns, you should give this a spin.

PASTORS, CONGREGATION FIND A WAY TO RECONCILE AT GERMANTOWN BAPTIST:

...On Sunday evening, Jan. 29, in Germantown, Fowler called his flock together to confess, forgive and repent corporately in a special service he called "Grace Applied."

"We have prayed so long for this service," Fowler began as hundreds of past, present and future church members and leaders filled the seats of the worship center. "Your Holy Spirit has prepared the hearts of many, many people who have a desire to be here tonight."

Fowler had prepared for the service by writing a declaration of confession and forgiveness for the congregation to read aloud together. He also set the stage with three chairs, three basins of water and three white towels.

Fowler introduced three special guests and asked them to join him on stage.

more, via GetReligion (I have no idea what the backstory is here!)

IT'S LIKE THEY KNOW ME.

DO THE RIGHT THING: I don't care much about Tolkein, but I liked how this post (via Wesley Hill) delineates two different kinds of morality tale: the one about the difficulty of knowing which choice is right, and the one about the difficulty of doing the good even when you know it.

Tangentially: I've just watched two recent adaptations of Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. I really don't approve of how much they mistrust their audience (they're very tarted-up with chase scenes and self-referential inside jokes and that sort of thing, and the language is mostly simplified) so I don't think I recommend them, even though I did like a lot of things I think most people wouldn't, such as Minnie Driver. I always like her. Anyway, the story of An Ideal Husband is strong enough that it's still very moving. Earnest is harder to get right--so much of its humor depends on the contrast between the ridiculous triviality of its characters' scruples and objections, and the genuine emotional weight of those scruples' consequences. You have to make it both dizzy and poignant.

Both of them are morality plays, of course; in Husband the wrongdoing is really serious, while in Earnest it's the exact opposite of that. There's a sort of meta-moral to be drawn from the fact that the forgiveness which makes the comedic ending possible is the same in both plays.

IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN: A genuinely illuminating interview with Maurice Sendak. I was wary at first, thinking he might come across as self-impressed, but that really didn't happen (in my opinion):

...At 83, Sendak is still enraged by almost everything that crosses his landscape. In the first 10 minutes of our meeting, he gets through:

Ebooks: "I hate them. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book! A book is a book is a book." ...

The term "children's illustrator" annoys him, since it seems to belittle his talent. "I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can't do that. I'm in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person." He and Eugene never considered bringing up children themselves, he says. He's sure he would have messed it up. His brother felt the same way: after their childhood, they were too dysfunctional. "They led desperate lives," he says of his parents. "They should have been crazy. And we – making fun of them. I remember when my brother was dying, he looked at me and his eyes were all teary. And he said, 'Why were we so unkind to Mama?' And I said, 'Don't do that. We were kids, we didn't understand. We didn't know she was crazy.'"

There was a partial reconciliation with his parents, a moment of understanding. They never made much of his work except once, when he was asked to illustrate a set of stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1978. They were proud of that, he says. For the illustrations, Sendak went back to the family album. "There were the photographs my father had of his younger brothers, all handsome and interesting-looking, and the women with long hair and flowers. And I went through the album and picked some of my mother's relatives and some of my father's and drew them very acutely. And they cried. And I cried. So there was that. And there still is that."

more (also via A&LDaily)

AND SOME WE DO FOR LOVE, LOVE, LOVE: Some brief comments by me on that NYTM cover story about Dan Savage and adultery-for-your-marriage. Let me know if you see any interesting commentary on the Times piece.

HOLY CATS! (Sorry.)

I haven't watched the linked YouTube video, since I'm pretty sure it would freak me out even at age 32.

THE COLD WAR, FORGIVENESS, AND CHAMPAGNE BECAUSE OF AWESOME.

GUANTANAMO GUARD REUNITED WITH EX-INMATES. Via Ratty.