Donnie Darko

It took me awhile to figure this one out. Normally one viewing is enough for me to get the Christian view of a movie. I find it in just about every movie I watch. It doesn't matter whether the writer or directors intended a Christian view or not; I normally see it. It's as if Christ is impossible to avoid in writing stories about humanity. Perhaps it was the complexity of Donnie Darko that kept me from seeing it until I'd watched it four times. Or better yet, it was the fact that the movie is full of so much that remind you of something thoughtful, something from your youth, something realistically or surrealistically engaging. The details of the movie are so good that you don't readily see the theme that runs throughout. Last week, I watched it, and the next morning, it hit me. And it was so obvious, I found it strange that I hadn't noticed it before. First, there are several key conversations that Donnie has during the movie. They are confrontational, and they involve important people. They involve Donnie making very pointed critiques of things; therefore, they tell us something about Donnie. Conversation One: When Donnie's girlfriend (eventually) enters his English class for the first time, he explains the short story by Graham Greene, "The Destructors." He goes straight to the theme, answering the teacher's question exactly. It's about creative destruction. Conversation Two: When another teacher demands Donnie mark on the "Love-Fear Continuum" where a certain situation falls, he explains to her what is missing in the Continuum, how there's more to life than just love and fear. He explains to her that life cannot be defined by just one thing; it's more complicated. Conversation Three: To his two friends, Donnie explains the Smurfs very concisely and corrects their incorrect understanding of the Smurfs story and characters. Conversation Four: Twice, Donnie discusses time travel with his science teacher. The first time he learns about Grandma Death and her book and the fact that she had taught at Donnie's school at one time. During the second conversation, Donnie explains the vector from the chest that shows your set path in life. The teacher says that he's contradicting himself because if we could see our path, then we could choose a different one. Donnie says, "Not if it's in God's plan." At that point, the teacher tells Donnie he can't talk anymore about it or he could lose his job. In that conversation, Donnie combined an understanding of time travel or control over time plus the predestinating sovereignty of God. Conversation Five: When Jim Cunningham, the pseudo-counselor, comes to speak at Donnie's school, Donnie questions Jim's economic incentive in speaking to the students, explains that he also has missed the entire connectedness of life in his obsession with love and fear, and accuses him of being anti-Christ. In these five conversations, Donnie is always on the offense, explaining something the others cannot see, and critiquing their lack. He even critiques his teachers and counselors. He is relentless in his critiques, and we agree with his critiques. Donnie acts as a prophet in these conversations. He also engages in acts of judgment - flooding the school (hints of Noah) because the school is "in great danger" according to Frank, and burning down the house of Jim Cunningham, the anti-Christ. Donnie engages in judgment using the two main biblical methods of massive judgment by God - by water like the great flood, and by fire like the lake of fire of the Book of Revelation. Water and fire are God's two great judgments on mankind. Of course, at the end of the movie, Donnie controls time and even life and death, essentially raising his girlfriend from the dead. Summing up who Donnie is: He's a prophet because he understands judgment and the interconnectedness of all of life, as shown in his conversations; he speaks judgment and engages in judgment, a God-like attribute; he controls time, another attribute of God, and life and death. However, all of his conversations are nothing but judgment, death-dealing and uncompromising judgment. The bunny is a sinister character & somewhat hard to pin down. Think about this though. The bunny protects Donnie by leading him from his home before the engine crashes into it. The bunny leads Donnie to perform destructive acts of judgment. But the bunny also disrupts Donnie's sleep, his state of mind, & even leads him to kill. In protecting him, the bunny stops Donnie from fulfilling his redemptive purpose. "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Matthew 16:25. In giving his life, Donnie redeems others; therefore, the bunny is a satanic influence, leading him from that selfless purpose to a purpose of saving himself & one of judging others instead of saving them. At the end, when Donnie dies, the people he'd spoken judgment to seem to wake up, literally and spiritually, knowing something about themselves they could not face before. They experience divine revelation about themselves. Jim Cunningham even appears to be weeping in repentance. Donnie's death results in redemption for the people he judged, new life for his girlfriend, and he allows himself to die after controlling time, knowing all along that his decision to go back in time would result in his death. Redemption has replaced the judgment these people would have experienced had Donnie not allowed himself to be killed by the jet engine. Only one other person did something like that. Christ went to the cross, the key to our redemption, knowing his death would happen but voluntarily going anyway. His death resulted in new life and redemption for humanity, which replaced the judgment which we should have experienced. He was a prophet who saw all things clearly. Finally, there's the most mysterious statement of all. When Donnie is held to the ground by the drug-abusing thug, just before his girlfriend is run over, he says something that sounds like "Deo macheo" or "Theo macheo." If he was speaking Greek, the Greek word "theomacheo" means to fight against God. If Latin, then it sounds like "deo machto." It sounds to me like he's using "Deo," not "Theo," and "macheo" instead of "machto." The Greek "Deo" means "to bind together." So, I'm still not clear on the actual statement. I'll have to use context, which is always best. Is he telling the thug that the thug is fighting against God? Or is he saying, "I fight against God." The latter would not make sense because Donnie was on the ground and on the defensive. It's hard to understand exactly what he's saying, but it would make more sense that he's saying, "You fight against God." Also, although I am no more than a novice with ancient Greek, it appears that from studying a Greek Concordance (Strong's) the ending sound, long "o," could apply to either a 1st person singular or a second person singular use of the Greek verb "mä'-khā." I choose 2d person, which means he was saying, "You fight against God." Donnie Darko is not simply a rebellious, confused teenager trying to figure out his life. Knowing how to judge all whom he encounters, controlling time itself, knowing the future (& altering it), and giving his life for others, he is a Christ figure if there ever was one.

The Matrix

It's been a long time since I said I would write something about The Matrix, but the task seems so daunting, and it's been so long since I watched it. Here are my initial thoughts. There's really no telling what the beliefs of the makers are; there's such a montage of meaning in it. However, I always look for the Christian message of a movie, even if unintended. I believe it appears in all aspects of life even in artistic works. In the Matrix are the obvious Christian messages and the not so obvious. But it's odd for a movie to be so wrapped up into a worldview that so parallels the Christian or biblical worldview as The Matrix does. The Matrix posits an entire world in which people think they're living in reality but really are living in a dreamworld created by a super-intelligence. In this world, some people realize something is wrong "like a splinter in your mind," as Morpheus tells Neo. The Matrix is all around; you can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church. "It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth." The truth that everyone is a "slave, born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or feel or taste, a prison for your mind." It is the reality that people live in. There are certain persons with extraordinary powers to do wonders and understand things beyond what normal humans understand. Like Christ, it is those who come from somewhere else, not the dreamworld, who understand. A person can escape the dreamworld, but it involves a form of dying to the slavery of the dreamworld and being "born again" into reality. For such a person to escape, they must be called out; they do not save themselves. The person is instructed to count the cost and that the only promise is that they'll know the truth. Then there's "the One," the person who knew how to recreate reality according to his will and who could show the way to freedom to the others. But in order to achieve that status of power, he must die and rise again. He's betrayed by a member of his own group, leading to his sacrifice and resurrection from the dead. That is an outline of the movie, not a picking of a random scene or event or sentence here and there which matches the Christian worldview. That is the theme of the movie, and it matches Christianity almost exactly. Now, what about individual scenes, statements, and characters from the movie.

The Matrix - Mr. Smith

Mr. Smith, the agent for the Machine, software that can enter and leave any other software in the Matrix. He is one of three agents we see, and they are all something other than human in their actions and speech. Particularly revealing is Neo's experience in the interrogation room, before he knows what is going on. Mr. Smith comes across as a professional, unemotional law enforcement officer, but he also comes across as something else. The agents are a demonic trinity, and Mr. Smith is in charge. We learn the most about Smith when he has Morpheus in custody, and he speaks to him "honestly." He's impressed with the brilliance and beauty of the Matrix, like it's the living world of God's creation, but it's something that he and the rest of the Machine built for "billions of people living out their lives, oblivious." You wonder if there's some hint at the real world, where billions of people live out their lives, oblivious of whom the true Creator is. Smith talks about "the first matrix" where everyone is happy. But it failed. He believed that human beings defined their reality through suffering. The second matrix is all about evolution. Like the dinosaur, humans no longer rule, and the computers took over and made it their time. Smith shares his "revelation" with Morpheus. He tried to classify human species. They're not mammals, which create a natural equilibrium with the environment. The only way humans survive is by monopolizing an area, then spreading to another area. Another organism that does that is a virus. "Human beings are a disease, . . . and we are the cure." Then Smith tells Morpheus his personal angst. He can't stand his job of living in the matrix with people, their smell. He hates reality. He's afraid he's been infected by the stench of humanity. He himself wants liberty from "reality." He wants slavery in the computer above all. Humanity can be exterminated as far as he cares. He's the epitome of a gnostic, one who claims to know the reality and wants freedom from being human. Smith is really a computer, and being, or pretending to be, human is just too much for him. Humanity and "reality" are just illusions to him. He wants escape. He's superior to all humans.

The Calling, that is, Election

In the Matrix, Trinity sets up a meeting with Neo (hacker name; his real name is Thomas Anderson), a meeting he doesn't even know he's attending. They meet in a place that can be described as a den of iniquity, sin and uncleanness. In their introduction to each other, she meets him and says, "Hello, Neo." He asks, "How do you know that name?" She answers: "I know alot about you." When she tells him her name, he asks, "The Trinity? that cracked the IRS D-base?" She says, "That was a long time ago." He says, "Jesus!" She says, "What?" So the parallel to Christ, in the name, the singularity, and the identification of someone who "knows alot about him is established early in the movie. She tells him: "I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, . . . why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit at your computer. You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him; I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did." Neo answers, "What is the Matrix?" Trinity: "The answer is out there, Neo. It's looking for you, and it will find you, if you want it to." THe very next conversation is between Neo and his supervisor at this job the next morning. The supervisor accuses Neo of believing he's special. Then, directly after, Morpheus calls him in a providentially set-up way and tells him: "I'm not sure you're ready to see what I'm planning to show you." Then he attempts to guide Neo to prevent being apprehended by the agents of the enslavers who are trying to detain him and prevent him from following Morpheus. Ultimately, Neo is asked to risk his life to obtain enlightenment and freedom, but he can't do it. His trust in Morpheus is weak. He doesn't know him. He is self-pitying: "Why is this happening to me? I didn't do anything." He's lost and doesn't even know it. He's like you and me before knowing Christ - unwilling to risk life and limb for what we do not know, selfishly thinking we're innocent and not knowing how lost he is. The only thing he has going for him is that he disrespects the reigning authorities and definitely doesn't trust them either. That is shown in the next scene when they detain him and "bug" him in order to track his movements and hopefully catch Morpheus. Then Morpheus calls Neo again, during a thunderstorm, and tells him: "They don't know how important you are, or they would have killed you." Like Satan didn't know how important Christ and his death were, or they would not have killed the Lord of glory. When Morpheus meets Neo, Neo is still a potential enemy. Morpheus' assistants have to ensure that Neo doesn't hurt them because even though he means them no harm, he's clueless as to the dangers of the trackers and what they intend to do to Morpheus and his group. Morpheus sends him to the "Adams Street Bridge." Adams street? How much more obvious could you get? Neo still lives in Adam's world, and he knows where that road leads; he's been down it before. Trinity tells him, therefore, Neo has to trust Trinity because she knows that's not where he wants to be. After explaining as much as he could about the Matrix, Morpheus must admit that Neo can only understand what it is by seeing for himself. Morpheus gives Neo a choice to find out, where there's no turning back. Neo must partake of a communion of sorts, eating either a blue pill or a red pill. Choosing the red pill is deciding on a change, an encounter with reality, with truth. Neo chooses the truth. In being prepped for the "trip" out of "Kansas," he asks Trinity: "You did all this?" Trinity: "Yep." Before he enters the truth, he's still blind as to his condition, his slavery, his blindness to the truth. Morpheus asks him: "Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure it was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?" When Neo awakes, he discovers he's part of a network of sleepers that powers an evil empire of lies. He may have never intended to support such evil, but he does, merely by being blind to the truth. Trinity and Neo continue the double entendres throughout the movie. In another scene, Neo says, "God," as an expletive, and Trinity answers, "What?" When Neo meets the oracle, the prophet, he learns what? It's hard to tell. She doesn't say he is or isn't the One. He leaves thinking that he's not the One, but Morpheus later tells him he learned exactly what he needed. What he needed was love. His love for Morpheus causes him to act in a way that indicated he didn't care what happened to himself, leading him to great deeds, leading to the discovery that he was the One. Had he continued to think, "I must protect myself because I'm the One," then he never would have risked himself for Neo. The One loves his brother more than himself. The calling is important, but it's less important than loving one's brother.

Morpheus = John the Baptist

Morpheus is wanted by the authorities. He's outside the regime. He brings others into the truth. He baptizes them into a new way. Morpheus asks Neo: "Do you want to know what it is?" If Neo chooses the blue pill, the avoid reality pill, then he wakes up in his bed and "believes whatever you want to believe." Unreality is not fixed; it's changeable and subject to opinion. The red pill, the reality pill, will allow you to see the matrix, the truth. Morpheus has exited the dream world, lives frugally in a ship called "The Nebuchadnezzar." And he brings in those who have escaped and heals and rebuilds them. He's sure of what he's doing, his calling. He pulls Neo out of the baptismal waters and into his ship. Morpheus explains the Matrix and its structure to Neo. Morpheus explains the limits of reality to Neo and how what is real can be changed, imitated, recreated. He shows Neo the world as it exists today, a desert, a wasteland, like the spiritual reality of the human world destroyed by sin. What we ourselves had created were the cause of our own destruction. Like the law of God, Morpheus explains the slavery, how it works, the condition of humanity. Like that of John the Baptists, Morpheus' mission involves hardship and suffering. Most importantly, Morpheus tells people about the Messiah, the One who "had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the matrix however he saw fit, . . . who freed the first of us, taught us the truth." Morpheus believes "the oracle," what we would call the prophet. The oracle speaks of the One to return. Therefore, Morpheus has spent his entire life looking for him. And Morpheus believes he has found the One in Neo. Morpheus trains Neo in spiritual warfare, or digital warfare, as far as the movie's concerned. Like the catechism question about having a soul as well as a body and the scripture in James about the body not living without the spirit, Morpheus catechizes Neo about the reality of dying in the matrix, even though it's just in the mind: "The body cannot live without the mind." Near the climax of the move, Morpheus is caught and imprisoned. Sounds like John the Baptist, who leads the way for the One, the Messiah.

Neo, the New Man, & Trinity

Neo, or new in Latin, is the new man, saved from darkness, blindness, slavery, to walk in a new life. He represents sinful man, saved from slavery to the world of deception of the devil, but he's also the Messiah, the One who will bring others into freedom. Neo speaks to Cipher, the traitor, not knowing he's the traitor, and learns that Cipher wants to go back to Egypt. "Why, oh, why didn't I take the blue pill?" But it's Trinity who knows who Neo is. She knows but cannot say. They work in perfect harmony, like the real Trinity. That's displayed when the helicopter scene occurs, and they act in tandem as if they know what they other's doing. Smith is also a Devil character, seeking to kill Neo. Trinity brings Neo back to life, like the Father bringing the Son back to life. Neo dies and rises again at Room 303, Heart O'the City Hotel. Her faith in what the oracle/prophet is greater than death itself. Trinity is like Abraham who believes that God will bring his son, Isaac, back from the dead. In his resurrection body, he still has the marks of the bullets in his chest, like Christ who still has the scars of the nails in his hands. then, in the last scene of the movie, he tells the machine that he knows it's scared. He tells them the world will be shown what it's like to not have borders and boundaries, like Christ broke down the walls and boundaries between man and God. He then ascends into the heavens, as Christ ascended into heaven. I know there are other ways to interpret the movie, even anti-Christian ways, but that's how I interpret it.