Thanks for this review. I’m looking forward to seeing this movie.
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And thanks also for standing up for the fact than an adopted child’s life is not a lie.  I was adopted… so I know that to be true, my parents are my parents and better still - they are the parents God intended for me all along, in His divine plan.  Granted, I can say that because my parents didn’t keep the fact of my adoption from me for 19 years.  It was explained to me on the first day of Kindergarten - and it made perfect sense!
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I think maybe people who have never experienced adoption in their lives, or their family/friend circle just don’t understand that there is no difference. (in the parent/child relationship)  I hear it from those types all the time - but I still don’t understand how in this day and age so many people have not experienced adoption?!

Thanks for the helpful review.  As an adoptive father of two children, I was wondering about the adoption angle in this movie, and you’ve confirmed my concerns.  I really wonder why writers felt it necessary to take this approach.  I appreciate that they’ve made a pro-life movie that has a chance to succeed, and I hope it becomes a mechanism that helps women choose life and heal from abortion.  But I’ll probably skip it.

Stephen, What is the overall grade that you have given to this movie? Your DF rating system is not in effect on the regester and you have not put it up yet at your website. I’m looking forward to your review of ‘The Hunger Games’.

As an adoptive parent, I will probably skip it, too. If I am not a parent, what am I? An extended time babysitter? I don’t think so!

I’m an adoptive parent, also, twice over.  Yes it is an infinitively greater task to raise a child than to donate the sperm, but biology is predisposition, if not exactly destiny.  I don’t suppose any adoptive parent enjoys hearing their child say they must be about their father’s business, but that’s the way it is.  My claim to be child’s parent is not exclusive, regardless of what I’ve done to earn it.  And that’s the truth, not the whole truth, but it is a truth.  I wouldn’t judge the movie or, more pertinently, the feelings of an adoptive child too harshly on this point.

Thanks, Steven, for this insightful review. You put your finger on many of the problems with the film. I can’t agree, however, that the film is still well-crafted. My take can be found here: http://catholicexchange.com/movie-review-october-baby/

Daniel McInerny,
 
Thanks for your comments, and for your fair and penetrating critique of the film, which aptly expresses many of the limitations of the film’s narrative.
 
My comments about the film’s craft relate primarily to the actual craft of putting the story on the screen. It’s natural for Christian critics to focus on story, plot, conflict, theme, character, dialogue and so forth, and reasonably so. But film is first of all a visual medium. Cinema can exist without any story, plot, conflict, theme, character or dialogue, but cinema can’t exist without images. A filmmaker’s camera is more like a painter’s brush than a writer’s typewriter, though this is not widely appreciated by casual moviegoers. Many of us notice a clunky line of dialogue more than a clunky shot, but the clunky shot may easily be a worse flaw.
 
It’s quite true, as you note, that too many scenes in October Baby come down to heart-to-heart discussions. But look at how some of those discussions are filmed. Among a number of shots and sequences I could mention, consider one that takes place when Hannah’s father has come to pick her up in Mobile. At the airport, they are arguing about Hannah’s parents’ failure to tell her about her origins. She then asks a question that reveals that she knows something else her parents didn’t tell her (I don’t want to spoil it), stopping her father in his tracks.
 
This conversation happens to take place on an airport skyway. Hannah has just ascended a short flight of concrete stairs, and turns to face her father, looking down from above, face cast in shadow by the lights behind her. He looks up at her from below, face fully exposed by direct light from above. He then proceeds to tell her what he had never told her before, and hadn’t planned to tell her then.
 
Just from the staging and lighting, you would understand the emotional thrust of that scene if you didn’t speak English at all. I could give that exchange to the best screenwriter in Hollywood for a rewrite, and maybe it would be a lot better. But if it were filmed as a typical shot–reverse shot dialogue with less imaginative staging and lighting, I would still prefer the actual October Baby version of the scene.

Thanks, Steven, for your further insights. My review of October Baby took aim at the work precisely as a piece of visual storytelling, and not just at those elements of it, like dialogue, that could translate into other mediums.

Plot is action, as Aristotle says, and October Baby fails because it does not show us the characters involved in predicaments that elicit the thoughts and emotions the filmmakers desire us to experience. Instead what we get is talk in which the characters are constantly expressing more thought and emotion than is warranted by the predicament of the scene they are in. The result is smarminess and preaching. I utterly agree with you in your review that cinema is about showing rather than telling. That’s exactly where October Baby fails.

I acknowledge the point you make in your nice analysis of the cinematic imagery at the airport scene. But there’s not nearly enough of this kind of artistry in the film. The heart-to-hearts with the nurse at the abortion clinic, with the cop at the police station, with the priest at the cathedral, with Jason and her father on numerous occasions, ad nauseum—are clunky filmmaking, not just in terms of poor dialogue, but in terms of their lack of imagination in visual imagery rooted in action.

A further point, Steven. You write that:

“Cinema can exist without any story, plot, conflict, theme, character or dialogue, but cinema can’t exist without images.”

This is not quite accurate. Cinema may be able to exist without dialogue, but it in no way can exist without story, plot, conflict, theme and character. For these are what the cinematic images are images of.

And story, plot, conflict, theme and character arise out of the actions of characters (not primarily speeches they make in conversation). For this reason cinema prizes the showing of characters in action more than what they say, and thus that there can be a perfectly coherent silent such as The Artist.

Daniel,

I think there are basically two separate issues here. The nub of your critique, it seems to me, is on the level of story: Characters and ideas are explored and revealed through dialogue (obvious, on-the-nose and frequently implausible dialogue) rather than through action. I entirely agree that there is too much of this. Some of it is appropriate and reasonably fitting (I agree with Roger Ebert that the key scene with the nurse has the needed weight and dialogue, in addition to being very well acted), but much of it is clunky and unconvincing (the bit with the cop at the police station you rightly cite is one of the most egregious examples). The scene with the priest I would put somewhere in the middle, but there’s been so much of it already that it’s entirely reasonable to say that it just adds to the problem.
 
Be that as it may, the creative choice on the level of story to engage characters and ideas through dialogue is one issue, and the craft of putting that story, such as it is, on the screen is another. 
   
For what it’s worth, my sentence in full reads, “It’s certainly a good-looking film — probably the best-crafted Christian-produced film I’ve seen since Bella, easily a cut above Courageous.” “Good-looking” is the context for my comments about the film’s craft. Watching the film, I regularly appreciated the Erwin brothers’ confident and effective visual choices, and that’s what I’m referring to.
 
With respect to action, I seem to be the only one who though (and I still think) that the road trip is the best stretch of the film. From the moment Truman shows up in the library to the beach party to the soaking-wet hotel lobby scene, I think the film breathes and flows in a way that the rest of the story seldom does. I emphatically agree with the criticism that it’s tonally out of step with the rest of the film, but I see that as a problem with the rest of the film rather than with the road trip.

I understand the point you’re making, Steven, but I think you’re pressing the distinction between “story” and “a good-looking film” too hard. The filmmakers’ visual choices were expressed in large part through the over-use of smarmy dialogue scenes.

And true enough, the sentence of yours I quoted in my earlier comment did have a context. Still, a sentence that begins “Cinema can exist without any story, plot, conflict, etc.” is written to be taken categorically. Are you now saying that we shouldn’t take this sentence categorically? In any event, how do you understand the relationship between story (which I take to mean the sequence of actions undertaken by the protagonist) and the visual imagery of a film?

I also think the road trip, and the comedy with Truman and B-Mac, was a nice thought on the part of the filmmakers. The fact that they abandoned it so readily is one of the reasons that second act of the plot meanders so.

Thanks for listening to my comments today.

Daniel,
 
One other point:

“This is not quite accurate. Cinema may be able to exist without dialogue, but it in no way can exist without story, plot, conflict, theme and character. For these are what the cinematic images are images of.”

 
These are what cinematic images may be images of. I suppose if one defines “story” so broadly that it encompasses any sequence whatsoever, even swirling colors and shapes in Toccata in Fugue in Disney’s Fantasia, then every film by definition has a “story.” Likewise, we could say that even a dung beetle rolling a ball of dung in Microcosmos is a potential example of “conflict,” and the Empire State Building becomes a “character” when Andy Warhol points a camera at it for 485 minutes in Empire. At any rate, these are not the sorts of stories, conflicts and characters that lend themselves to the sort of narrative criticisms we’re considering here.

I, too, am talking this morning about (popular) narrative cinema, not experimental, non-narrative cinema of the sort you mention in your examples from Fantasia and Andy Warhol. And so when I read your categorical definition of cinema as not requiring plot and action, I was taken aback. Cinema is at its heart, I contend, the visualization by means of a camera of the actions of a protagonist or set of protagonists.

“Cinema is at its heart, I contend, the visualization by means of a camera of the actions of a protagonist or set of protagonists.”

 
That’s not a bad description of what “popular narrative cinema” usually is in practice. Definitionally, I’d be more inclined to say that cinema at is heart is the visualization of whatever the filmmakers are interested in, which is often the actions of a protagonist or set of characters (I’m not sure you can really have a “set of protagonists”), but can also be more than that, and doesn’t have to be that at all.
 
Even on the level of popular narrative cinema, cinema can be as much “about” setting, atmosphere, culture, performance or some other quality as it is about characters and actions. A Busby Berkeley musical like Footlight Parade or a chop-socky movie like Supercop certainly has characters and actions, but those are just a pretext for what the movies are at their heart, what they are really about, which is dazzling moves and choreography and set pieces and spectacle. Again, some would argue that, say, Lawrence of Arabia and The African Queen are really more driven by the fascination of, respectively, the desert and the jungle than their characters or anything they do.
 
P.S. It’s nice to find someone who agrees with me about the road trip. Cheers.

I’m not prepared to go as far as you, Steven, with the definition of cinema. Pointing a camera at the Empire State Building for 485 minutes is photography, not cinema. Cinema is essentially visual storytelling. (By a film with a set of protagonists, I simply mean a film with an ensemble cast, such as The Big Chill.)

Sure, lots of stories tilt the emphasis away from plot and toward spectacle, comedy, imagery, etc. But that doesn’t mean that plot is no longer, to paraphrase Aristotle, the soul of the narrative. If there were no plot at the heart of even a Berkeley musical, you wouldn’t have a musical, you’d have a floor show. Plot is essentially, though certainly not exclusively, what storytelling is.

Finally, I wouldn’t accept the point, argued by some, that Lawrence of Arabia and The African Queen are “more driven by the fascination of, respectively, the desert and the jungle than their characters or anything they do.” If the protagonists of these films were not encountering deep conflict in pursuit of the object of their quests—and they most certainly are—the deserts and the jungles they pass through would hold no fascination for us at all.

A photograph is a representation of a moment in time. Cinema embraces time itself. Suppose a movie has a static 15-second shot of a sunset or a mountain. Is that photography, not cinema? No, because the shot lasts 15 seconds. A photograph has no duration.
 
According to the great Catholic film writer Andre Bazin, all representative art is an effort to capture and attest to moments in time, to rescue fragments of reality from transience and corruption. Photography, Bazin believed, is uniquely able to do this because it has the ability to record real moments and real things by a process with a meaningful degree of objectivity and independence from human interpretation. But cinema, he said, goes beyond photography precisely in that it captures the continuous passage of time itself, redeeming even time from corruption.
 
The great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky defined cinema as “sculpting in time.” Warhol’s Empire may be very minimalist “sculpture,” but sculpting in time it certainly is.

A STILL photograph is a representation of a moment in time. But if I turn my Canon T2i to its video function and shoot ten minutes of the dandelions blooming in my yard or the Empire State Building, I am not making cinema in any but the most recherché sense. I am engaged in what I think can fairly be called photography, or videography. But whatever it’s called, it’s not cinematic storytelling, which I take it is our topic today. If Warhol does any “sculpting” in his film of the Empire State Building (which I have not seen), I wonder if that sculpting has anything to do with people in action in and around the building. I wonder, that is, if it has anything to do with real narrative.

Bazin and Tarkovsky make excellent points, I think, as far as they go. But again, the “sculpting in time” we are interested in when it comes to cinema is that which captures human beings encountering obstacles in the pursuit of a much-coveted goal.

It’s not just ANY passage of time we’re interested in when we go to the movies.

This discussion is getting interesting. :-)
 
Fair enough, we might not want to count your ten-minute dandelion video as “cinema.” By the same token, we might also demur at applying that word to your ten-minute home movie of your children’s birthday party, even if we might identify elements of narrative, character and conflict in the video. (Is that coveted present among the brightly colored packages? Can all those candles really be blown out in one breath? Mom, he’s drinking my punch!)
 
Taking at stab at why this is so: By cinema we understand not any motion picture imagery, but motion picture art (including popular art, high art, experimental art, etc.). That is, cinema comprises motion picture presentations created and shaped for aesthetic and/or entertainment effect, and intended to be received by viewers on that level.
 
A typical birthday party video, made primarily to appeal to an audience whose personal affection for the people in the video is the main point of interest, is not cinema. However, if you are a documentary filmmaker, then you might film and edit birthday party footage in such a way that it becomes cinema.
 
I use the term “art” broadly and descriptively, not as a term of approval. Art can be excellent or poor, uplifting or degrading, meaningful or malarky. In general, if a presentation is intended to be art, I’m inclined to say that it is art, however good or bad it may be. Something like John Cage’s “4 minutes 33 seconds” pushes even my limits, but short of that, confonted with even the most cacaphonous and unmusical recording, where someone else might object indignantly “That’s not art!” I’d be more inclined to say “It’s no good.”
 
Aristotle’s dictum about narrative is an excellent canon for drama or theater. It would be a potentially very misleading way to approach, say, dance, painting, poetry, sculpture or music, even though these arts can contain elements of narrative and story and character.
 
And cinema is not just glorified theater, even though it’s often used that way both by filmmakers and audiences. It is something else. Often it functions in ways closely related to drama, but it can also function in ways more like poetry. Cinema has been called the fusion of all arts: photography, writing, drama, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, etc. To the extent that cinema is akin to painting, photography and music, Aristotle’s dictum may be misleading, or at least of limited applicability.
 
You say that “the ‘sculpting in time’ we are interested in when it comes to cinema is that which captures human beings encountering obstacles in the pursuit of a much-coveted goal.” That is a crucial element of interest, yes, particularly with respect to “popular narrative cinema,” but not the only one or even necessarily the main one. Some movies, even popular narrative movies, don’t focus on human beings at all (e.g., March of the Penguins or The Bear). Some movies are interested in human beings even when they aren’t pursuing a much-coveted goal (e.g., Slacker or My Neighbor Totoro). With some movies, plot truly is beside the point (e.g., Rumble in the Bronx).
 
While I recognize the value in considering the demands of popular narrative cinema in particular, just as one can consider the demands of Westerns or family films, ultimately these are somewhat artificial distinctions. Cinema is cinema, and if plot isn’t essential to the success of films like Into Great Silence, Koyaanisqatsi and Fantasia, then our theories of cinema need to reflect that possibility.
 
You say “It’s not just ANY passage of time we’re interested in when we go to the movies.” True. If we are receptive moviegoers, and the movie is worth our time, we will be interested in the passage of time the filmmaker wants to show us. Characters and plot are likely candidates, but not prerequisites.

P.S. A couple of years ago I used my iPhone to create a shaky 5-minute video of an elaborate Nativity display at an Italian parish near our house. I am not a filmmaker, but my presentation was created and shaped for aesthetic effect, and was meant to be appreciated on that level. I used closeups and wide shots, zooms and pans. I planned the shot before I did it to achieve the best effect I could. In its humble, unassuming, amateurish way, I would say that this is cinema, of a sort.

A Nativity display…meaning that all your closeups and wide shots, zooms and pans, were at the service of the Nativity story, represented by the figures in the creche.

In other words, your cinematic choices in this film—which are very nice, by the way!—are all made for the sake of enhancing our appreciation of the beauty of the opening episode in the narrative of the Incarnation.

My point is simply that cinema is always about story.

I’ve enjoyed this discussion today as well. But I’m afraid we’re the only ones who have done so! :)  I hope I haven’t driven all your other readers away….

Some quick thoughts at the tired end of the day.

A bad family birthday party movie is cinema well enough along the lines I have defended the term today—it’s juts hokey, bad, but endearing-to-those-involved cinema…

So I agree with you that “art” applies to things that are made, whether good, bad or middling…

I’m an Aristotelian, as no doubt you’ve noticed, when it comes to these matters. Aristotle would say that plot is the soul of cinema and all the narrative arts. That’s why I cannot go with you in making plot something accidental, rather than at the very essence, not only of cinema, but of all the narrative arts. I do believe that cinema is a fusion of many arts, but there is a hierarchy of functions (as Aristotle argues in the Poetics). Plot is at the top of the hierarchy.

I also can’t agree with some of your descriptions: Into Great Silence most certainly has a plot, though a loose one compared to a Hollywood script…Fantasia does not qualify as a single narrative, it’s an episodic experimentation piece, but there are plots within some of its episodes…even movies with animal protagonists have clear narrative arcs in which a much-coveted goal is sought by a protagonist: either the animal is personified in order to do this (Lassie), or the animal’s instincts are shown to have a narrative arc (March of the Penguins), or a human being is the real protagonist of the story (Mr. Popper’s Penguins).

I might even go beyond Aristotle in thinking of some “non-narrative” arts, such as dance, as narrative in character. As long as human movements, emotions are being represented, we are in the terrain of narrative.

And the reason I think is that when we have human beings, narrative enters into play. We are narrative beings, for the further Aristotelian reason that we are made for an ultimate end—happiness, God (whether we realize or not)—and we cannot escape acting within this narrative structure. It pervades everything we do. Even if we are filming a train rolling into a station (one of the earliest, if not earliest, films), we do so because of the at least inchoate story involved.

I think we might be approaching the point where we may be disagreeing more about vocabulary than substance. I’ve said that cinema is shaped for aesthetic effect, that is, it has a deliberate sequence with a beginning, middle and end that is meant to have a satisfying shape, to resolve in a satisfying way. I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “narrative” or “plot” for this—I would say that Into Great Silence, like Bach’s Toccata in Fugue, has a structure rather than a “narrative” or “plot”—but I’m not willing to go to the mat for such distinctions.
 
If our nature as “narrative beings” means that narrative “pervades everything we do”—if we are using “narrative” to embrace even pure music or abstract painting—then yes, in that sense all cinema is “narrative.” Likewise, “conflict” can refer to the tension generated by an unresolved musical cadence, etc. But then equally still photography and even Warhol’s Empire must be narrative-based, since they too are created by human beings.
 
On the other hand, you say Fantasia has plots within some of its sequences. In other words, some of its sequence don’t. So then a cinematic sequence or movement, or even in principle an entire film, can proceed without reference to plot?

Yes, Steven, if you affirm cinema as “a deliberate sequence with a beginning, middle and end that is meant to have a satisfying shape, to resolve in a satisfying way,” then I think we are in substantial agreement about the nature of cinema. I might clarify the definition to say that the “deliberate sequence” in question is that of a protagonist or set of protagonists in pursuit of a much-coveted goal. 

My sense of this definition is inspired by the Chestertonian view, rooted in the perennial philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas, that we human beings love cinema and all stories because our own lives take the form of a story. We love narration—imaginative quests with beginnings, middles and ends—because we are on such a quest ourselves. 

What has come up in our discussion, however, are certain works that push the envelope of this definition of cinema. The screenwriting guru Robert McKee, in his wonderful book STORY, distinguishes between “arch plot” (the conventional Hollywood three-act plot), the “mini plot” and the “anti plot.” In the mini plot and anti plot filmmakers like to mess around with our natural narrative sense. To undermine it even, sometimes. So we have Warhol’s Empire or Fellini’s 8 1/2 or certain parts of Disney’s Fantasia.

I guess what I was getting at yesterday is that oftentimes we find traces of the “arch plot” in “mini plot” or “anti plot” movies. And I think this is so because anytime human agents are portrayed in on film, it is well nigh impossible (given the ineluctably narrative structure of human action) NOT to portray them as questing after something. So while filmmakers, and not just the avant garde, like to play around with, if not wholly frustrate, our expectation to see agents involved in an “arch plot,” there is still often some trace of “arch plot” narrative in their films, as I would contend there is, for example, in Into Great Silence. The monks, after all, are living the arch plot of all arch plots, the quest for God through contemplative prayer, and we see this quest vividly on screen, though the structure of the film overall, which simply follows the monks through the seasons of a single year, tends toward what McKee calls “anti plot” (though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it IS anti plot).

Would I call an “anti plot” film cinema? I guess I would in a sociological sense, in that it’s a product made by filmmakers and makes up part of the history of the art we call cinema. But I think a truly anti plot film, like Warhol’s Empire or Fellini’s 8 1/2, is really an exception that proves the rule that cinema, like all narrative, is really about arch plot. It’s sometimes interesting and stimulating to see high art conceptual pieces, but the farther they tend toward anti plot I think the less artistically satisfying they are. In similar fashion, I don’t call Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake a novel. It’s an art piece, a product of theory, intellectual satisfying in many ways (after all, the name McInerny appears in it!), but a person has to be in the grip of a thesis to call it a novel. You can probably guess that I’m not a fan of abstract painting. I think it’s really the negation of painting.

But I think Terence Malick’s Tree of Life is a great example of a film that strays from the arch plot in a very stimulating and creative way without going all the way into anti plot. (To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Fantasia to its end. I suppose I simply got bored with it. But I’ve seen enough of it to know that it moves from Mickey’s very conventional arch plot episode to other, more conceptual, mini plot or even anti plot episodes).

Decent film. Definite pro-life message, well worth the price of the ticket. The premise of this movie is strangely similar to a recent novel, ONLY WOMEN BLEED, by L.J. Rivard. The main character in the novel learns on her twenty-first birthday that she survived abortion as an infant. The novel’s main character, Jessica, also was born in October! She goes on a quest to find out the truth about her beginnings, in particular, the woman who aborted her. The book is not preachy at all, like some of the comments I’ve read about the movie. It’s a good read, written by a lawyer, and so I learned a little something about the state of abortion law in this country as a bonus. ONLY WOMEN BLEED is available on amazon. The similarities between the book and the movie are a little uncanny since the topic is so unique, but I’d recommend both- they make you think!

I was saddened to see that adoptive parents do not want to see this film after reading your review.  I agree that Hannah’s father should have had a rebuttal to the accusation that he is not her father, however I think the last line of the movie, (I think it was the last,) more than makes up for this flaw and shows the absolute beauty of adoption. I would be more concerned about teens who are adopted seeing this film before their adoptive parents had seen it and had time to talk about the different issues raised.

I’m not a fan of abstract painting either, Daniel, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “the negation of painting.” I tend toward my friend Tim Jones’s thesis that abstract painting is essentially decorative, but lacks the capacity for sublimity that great representational painting can achieve. On the other hand, I don’t object to non-representationality in music or dance, and abstract animation, where rhythm and resolution can be embodied in time, is potentially more powerful to me than abstract static painting (and from that you may guess that I love Fantasia and never tire of watching it, any more than I tire of listening to my favorite music).
 
Story as you have defined it (“a protagonist or set of protagonists in pursuit of a much-coveted goal”) is certainly a powerful paradigm with great explanatory value regarding the human person and the human world, including the world of artistic expression. The paradigm that I find most powerful, expressed by Pope Pius XII in his 1955 apostolic exhortation on the “ideal film,” is truth, goodness and beauty. Here is what the pope says:

In so far as the film has reference to man, it will be ideal in content to the extent that, in perfect and harmonious form, it measures up to the original and essential demands of man himself. Basically, these demands are three: truth, goodness, beauty—refractions, as it were, across the prism of consciousness, of the boundless realm of being, which extends beyond man, in whom they actuate an ever more extensive participation in Being itself.

 
Story is one profound framework within which truth, goodness and beauty are expressed, apprehended, honored and pursued. It is not the only framework. A great piece of music does not have a protagonist in pursuit of a much-coveted goal. It expresses beauty and truth in another way: through harmony and symmetry, tension and resolution, and so on. Even when music becomes a vehicle for story, story may not be the best or primary lens through which the greatness of music is best apprehended.
 
The same can be true of film. Just because a film has a narrative doesn’t mean that narrative is of decisive importance in the film’s achievement (or non-achievement). The narrative may not be the point at all. It may be incidental. A film may be a character study, more interested in exploring a person than in narrating his pursuit of a goal. It may be a documentary seeking to reveal some aspect of the world we live in, or of the human world. One can certainly choose to discuss such films in terms of story, but this may not be the most illuminating approach.
 
For example, one can certainly find a story being told in, say, The Face: Jesus in Art or Father Barron’s “Catholicism.” But I don’t think that “a protagonist or set of protagonists in pursuit of a much-coveted goal” is the best lens for clarifying the power of these works. I think they are better served by the paradigm of beauty, truth and goodness.
 
I would even say that truth, goodness and beauty are prior to story and embrace it, rather than the other way around. We love story inasmuch as it manifests beauty, truth and goodness; we do not love beauty, truth and goodness inasmuch as they manifest story. On the contrary, just as beauty, truth and goodness can exist without story, so story can exist without, or even opposed to, goodness, truth and beauty—and when that happens, story should be rejected. Story by itself, apart from or opposed to goodness, truth and beauty, has no value at all, or even a negative value. It is goodness, truth and beauty, with or without story, that are the criterion of excellence in art.

As an adult adoptee, like Rebecca, I am saddened to see that adoptive parents will not see this based on the review.  I don’t think the main story was in regards to pro-life/pro-choice.  It mainly was the story of an adoptee searching.  The secondary story was that of the abortion issue.  Many of the emotions (even the erratic ones) are what many of us adoptees have been through in our lives.  My husband said that it helped him understand me better because of how my emotions have been regarding my adoption and reunions.  Parents (adoptive) should be secure with their relationships to not let a movie like this upset them.  It really is a pretty accurate movie, imo.

I very much agree with what you have to say, Steven, in your remarks above about the importance of goodness, truth and beauty. As transcendental qualities of being they transcend not only story but all particular modes of being. But a well-crafted cinematic story will embody and manifest these qualities in its own unique way.

In films, however, in which there is a great emphasis upon exploration of character—and this I think will be all truly great films—such as “Tender Mercies” or “Of Gods and Men” or “Casablanca” or “Lawrence of Arabia” or what have you—there may not always be a rip-snorting, edge-of-your-seat, roller coaster of a plot such as in “2 Fast 2 Furious” or an Indiana Jones flick, in which the point is to move as quickly as possible from one suspenseful episode to the next with minimum exploration of character. The narrative may be low key and understated such as in “Tender Mercies.” Yet still there is narrative, and the character of the protagonist is revealed through the choices made, choices which make up the substance of the plot. In “Tree of Life,” for example, a mini plot as opposed to arch plot film, we learn about the character of the father through the choices he makes in, for example, harshly disciplining his sons. The scene in which he berates the eldest son at the supper table is part of the plot, even as it reveals crucially important things about his character. Character is only revealed through action (both in film and in life). For this reason I don’t want to say that narrative or plot or action is incidental to a film even when there is a strong emphasis upon the exploration of character.

And in a documentary such as Father Barron’s “Catholicism,” there is truth, beauty and goodness no doubt. But I think these qualities come to the fore through his examination of the history of the Church and its institutions and practices. Not that he presents that history in chronological sequence (which isn’t, after all, necessary for a narrative). Not that the episodes in the documentary have the same logical connection as episodes in a thriller. But the narrative of the Church’s militant stride through history nonetheless serves as the backdrop against which Father Barron’s exploration of this or that cathedral or sacramental practice is made intelligible to the audience. It is in and through that history that Truth, Beauty and Goodness (in the highest sense, as names for God) become embodied.

About abstract, conceptual pieces of cinema I will only say, again, that these are experiments at the limits (and beyond) of narrative. They can be stimulating, inspiring, good, true and beautiful. I may have been a bit too hard on them in my comments here. But I think our main interest with cinema and other arts that deal with narrative is human beings in pursuit of much-coveted goals. The box office amply testifies to this.

You’ve raised an intriguing kettle of fish with music. I have a hunch, one that I simply do not have the expertise to argue for, that even purely instrumental music has some connection to narrative—because it has a reference in human emotions. I take some cues here from Plato and Aristotle’s discussions of music. But my thinking on this is very tentative, and so I’ll leave it for our future discussions.

By the way, what did you think of “October Baby”? :)

I heard Steven Greydanus’s lukewarm review of the movie before I went to see the movie. After seeing the movie, I couldn’t understand the lukewarm review. I thought the movie was very good. One of the very few recent movies I felt was worth the price of a ticket.

MEE: Did you read my review? I’ve been specific about why I was less than wowed by the film. Daniel McInerny above has also offered a cogent critique that is both fair and insightful.
 
Something to consider: I have yet to hear from anyone who is not personally invested in the pro-life cause who was impressed by October Baby. As far as I can tell, all the evidence confirms my impression of the film itself as an exercise in preaching to the choir.

Steven, thank you for noticing that uncomfortable way in which the adoptive parents were treated.  My husband and I saw the movie yesterday, and I had hoped our adult adopted son would accompany us.  However, I was glad he chose not to. 

I was offended by the constant message that her “parents” were not her “real” parents.  Yes, adoptive parents have feelings and can be hurt by such references, in spite of maturity.  When you love, nurture, protect, worry about, etc., your child for a lifetime, you feel you deserve a bit more than being dismissed as “not” the real parents.

So happy you picked up on this.  It hit me like a kick in the stomach throughout the movie.  I’m sure it was not intentional.  People not involved in the adoption triad often don’t realize these things.

I think it gives a confusing message to younger adopted children as well. 

Thanks for a chance to vent!  Blessings to you.

I’m not too articulate but here’s my opinion.  How should “not personally invested in the pro-life cause” be defined.  Those of us who claim to be Catholic and see this movie would all be disqualified from having our favorable opinion counted then, right.  I don’t consider myself “personally invested” (doing all the pro-life actives and the like) yet I enjoyed the movie and would see it again.  I especially like the father’s role in the movie.  With two daughters of my own I can relate to the dad’s role and many of the scenes of father and daughter brought tears to my eye.  Maybe my standards for watching a movie are low, but I’m not necessarily looking for the best cinematic and scripted movie, but a movie with a story that moves and inspires me.  And as a dad this one did.  I had the same moving and inspiring feelings in watching There Be Dragons, even though I know no one in Opus Dei or am in it.  The scenes in the way Fr. Escriva took care and handled the eucharist to see that played out on the big screen was worth the price of admission.  If God calls my son to be a priest, I hope his feeling/actions towards the Eucharist is the same.  Steve is a reviewer and has to have that objectivity and that is good, but maybe there should be some catagory in which one can say it’s a great film because it’s a movie that lifts one spirit; sort of like what a retreat does for the soul.  Many movies I see out there just don’t do that.

Raymond:
 
Thanks for your comments.
 
I’m not saying anyone is “disqualified” from having their opinion “counted.” Everyone is free to “vote.” I’m just saying, when the “vote” on a film seems to split along strictly party lines, that suggests a limitation in the film. There’s a reason that Bella won the People’s Choice award at the Toronto Film Festival, and October Baby just wouldn’t. I want Christian filmmakers to aim for the Bella side of the ledger (and beyond Bella, frankly) than the October Baby side.
 
I understand that many people aren’t necessarily looking for the best cinematic or scripted movie, and that’s okay, to a point. At the same time, if you look at Church teaching on film, the Church considers it important to seek out and recognize films for their technical excellence (see Inter Mirifica) and cultural achievement (see Communio et Progressio).
 
I did try to acknowledge in this review that October Baby will be encouraging and edifying to many pro-lifers. At the same time, I think art should do more than that: It should speak across cultural divisions and let people who don’t share the film’s presuppositions experience that world in a meaningful way. The Passion of the Christ achieved this to a meaningful degree. So did Bella. The vast majority of Christian-produced films, including October Baby, don’t.

The movie trailer and reviews for “October baby” can be found here:

http://allhands-ondeck.blogspot.com/2012/04/october-baby-movie-trailer-and-reviews.html

review of October Baby http://www.mi7.co/2012/04/october-baby-review-worthy-of-oscar.html

Nice review, but I think you take the “my whole life is a lie” issue a little to far. Of course her parents are her parents and it is wrong to deny such a fact or to fail to correct such an error, but think of the context. You start out with an emotionally depressed teenager who finds out that her parents have kept an important aspect of her identity hidden from her for 19 years. Is it so strange to think that in this state she might make such a claim. Is it that far of a jump from “my life has no purpose” to “my life is a lie”? Is she wrong in her claim? Yes. Is it excusable? Yes. Is it wrong that her parents don’t correct her? No.
    If the parents were the ones to tell her this it would eliminate her chance to grow. When dealing with small children, parents need to remind them of their place because it is unlikely that they will figure it out on their own. Teenagers however are perfectly capable of reasoning on their own. At this point in their life they are growing into adults and while still needing to be supported and guided, they do not need to be spoon feed the answers as if they were a child. The only instances when this is necessary is when you are dealing with an arrogant child with whom gentle prodding is of no avail, as to spoon feed the answers is to humiliate them. Hannah is not arrogant but lost and depressed. To demand respect from her would tear her down further. The much better approach which the parent’s in the movie choose to take is to withstand the pain of their daughter’s remarks such that she can grow and realize her error. Through this learning process I believe she is able to love them more than she would have been if spoon feed the answer. Also, while punching out the daughter’s friend might be called for if he was a punk, it is clear that he truly cares for her and therefore his mistake, while deserving rebuke, in no way deserve a physical attack. For the father to hypothetically to do such a thing would be wrong and take away from the story.

While I agree with the need to list the pros and cons of the film to ensure even better films in the future, I believe your review is a bit to harsh and lacking an attempt to understand the characters.

P.S. I am writing this as a freshman in college and while I do not have the eye of a parent, I have the perspective of the main character. I know that I do not know everything about life but I do know that people in Hannah’s position need more support that correction.

I’m not much of a movie critic but I felt your review was better than most I’ve read.  I hadn’t realy thought much about the adoptive side of the issue (not bing an adoptive parent myself) but I thought the ending seen should have cleared that up.  “Thanks for wanting me”.  I’ve watched the DVD several times including the extras and loved it.  I recommend the movie to everyone I come in contact with and have not had one negative coment.  My hope is that everyone who views the film will have a better understanding of what an abortion realy is (the killing of an inocent child)  Adoption is the best alternative.