Movie Mayhem with God Part 4: The Lost Bladesman

This is the most current movie I've watched in threatres. Yup, the lead is none other than a revered historical figure in China, 关云长 a.k.a. 关公. Amongst so many numerous positive Chinese historical figures, he is one of the few who is able to be elevated to the status of a deity and worshipped (Confucius and 岳飞 being the only others I can think of for the time being), one would wonder why?

I'm not sure for other cultures, but I think our Chinese ancestors end up worshipping not really the historical characters per se, but more of their dedication in upholding certain universal virtues we hold so dear, even in the time of extreme adversity. Thus, I'll delve a bit into the plot of the movie. However I must emphasise, the movie is heavily fictionalised (of course for commercial and time constraint reasons of using film as the medium).

In the movie, the character undergoes a sort of trial not unlike Jesus' temptation by Satan in the desert for 40 days. He is sent by his god-brother cum ruler 刘备 on a rescue mission to the enemy side led by 曹操, who has held his god-brother's wife hostage. To his horror however, in this trip, some of the beliefs and values which he holds close are shaken.

Brotherhood & Loyalty- 曹操 knowing 关云长 has suppressed love and admiration for his god-brother's wife tempts his into defection by promising him to bethroth her to him.

Compassion for the people - 曹操 brings 关云长 around his kingdom, showing how he has provided the people under him with a relatively peaceful life with needs fulfiled, thus drilling in 关云长 the doubt of whether the ends justify the means, and is there really a need for a ruler who has a legitimate mandate as long as the people's needs are met.

Justice - 关云长 is waylaid on the way to rescue his god-brother's wife, by a certain town's general who is sent to stop him at whatever cost. That general exhibits compassion for his citizens evacuating them before 关云长 arrival. After the battle, the general asks 关云长 to promise to spare his township citizens. To 关云长's horror, the citizens want to fight him to death as they are grieved by the death of their general. Upon the arrival of 曹操, they are executed for inappropriate behaviour as 曹操 still wishes to sway 关云长. 关云长ends up feeling guilty for causing the deaths of these innocent lives.


During one of the extreme moments of temptation, 曹操 blasted 关云长 for his "blind" faith, saying "When you and I are long dead, you will be revered and worshipped, whereas I will be condemmed in history. However, those who do this are either fools like you, or people who wish to make use of fools like you". 曹操 also questions 关云长 whether he has ever had selfish desires to come into his own, saying he would provide him with all the power and authority, as long as he defected. Of course the movie is does not deviate from history and 关云长 finally emerges out of the trials, even more resolved to serve his god-brother. However even the historical fate of 关云长 resounds of many of Christ's disciples too...

After thr battle of Red Cliff, the three Kingdom era was officially established with 魏under 曹操、蜀under 刘备 and 吴under 孙权. Though 蜀&吴 kingdoms had forged an alliance in order to defeat 曹操 during the battle of Red Cliff, their alliance had been rocky, beset with suspicion of each other and internal rivalry. This eventually led the 吴ruler 孙权to approach 曹操 to do a joint surprise siege on a city guarded by 关云长 unawares. Eventually, the entire city was massacred, with 关云长 tragicly killed with his head decapitated with 曹操's side, while his body remained with the 吴 people who falsely claimed that they had rushed to assist but were too late. However this was just an opening to more mayhem as 曹操 used this event to openly crumble the 蜀吴alliance, through organising a state funeral in memory of 关云长, exposing the hypocrisy of all the 3 kingdom's rulers. Both the opening and closing of the film, which shows that funeral, 曹操 shows extreme respect for 关云长, wistfully saying that 关云长 had the potential to be a wolf, but he instead choose to be a lamb in wolf's clothing. He then remarks that all those involved in the politics of that era, 刘备、孙权、诸葛亮 were hypocrites, actually wolves in sheeps clothings, making use of 关云长 as a mere chess pawn. Then one of his officials questioned him "What about you, sir?" and 曹操 replied succintly "I never claimed I wasn't one", while wiping a tear but slowly turning a give a sly look.

Seems to end tragically at first glance but on second thought maybe not. The Chinese word 关云长 is always associated with is 义, meaning "loyalty and faith". In the ancient manuscript, the word 义 is written such that it actually comprises two characters symbols, 羊 (lamb) on top and 我 (me) on the bottom (the ancient manuscript of the word can be seen in the movie poster's background). Looking at it historically seems like the concept of having faith in one's beliefs means sacrificng one's own offering lamb (discard and sacrifice one's selfish desires ) in honour of God... For us Christians, we do not worship the first disciples per se, but we do honour them for their faith in sticking with their belief in Christ right till the end, and thus we too must emulate them, though we do it for praise from God, not human praise. Just as 关云长 kept reiterating in the film that he has no desire to become a hero and just wishes for peace for all through legitimate means, we believers just wish to serve the only true God. Amen.

for they loved human praise more than praise from God
John 12:43 (NIV)

Such a person's praise is not from other people, but from God.
Romans 2:29 (NIV)

We are not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else
1 Thessalonians 2:6 (NIV)

Movie Mayhem with God Part 3: Source Code

Finally a secular movie with God's positive wisdom! Though one tiny reason why I love this movie so, is that the lead actor Jake Gyllenhaal is a hunk... :P

Ok, back to the movie plot itself.
The lead "wakes up to find himself in the body of somebody else and finds out he is part of a mission to find the culprit of a certain train bombing". Sounds simple enough. Ah, when the time factor comes in, the poor lead, and us audience start to have a headache. Turns out that he is sort of "reliving the final 8 minutes of a certain victim in the train bombing."

Thus the initial action thriller part of the movie focuses on the lead trying to first find where the bomb on the train is, which passenger is the culprit and most importantly where this culprit has stashed his hide of another bigger amount of weapons for an even worse large scale bombing.

Then eventually the movie veers into the more philosophical, theological and emotional realm where the lead struggles with the concept of the mission. According to his superiors, the mission is solely to stop a future bombing. The 1st train bombing is considered past and irreversible. The leader however is unwilling to resign to this success alone. He hopes to prevent that "past bombing" since he is reliving that particular 8 minutes repeatedly and he has something for all the other innocent victims in that bombing (of course especially inclusive of an certain attractive spunky female lead). For the lead, the concept of events and time are not linear but could be parallel. He deduces and argues with one of the personnels in charge of the mission, that the future prevented 2nd bombing could have been a sort of "past event", thus justifying his rationale to give it a shot at remedying the 1st bombing. Ok, I'll leave the ending for you to find out when you head towards the theatres (please go soon, I don't think it will survive past next wednesday as it has run for more than 2 months).

The message from God in this movie is not so much of us being saviours like the lead to correct and remedy future and even past mistakes. Note that in the movie, the lead is a helicopter pilot in the US war on Afghan. He was selected for the special mission, as his life threatening injuries from the war matched closely that of that other victim in the 1st train bombing, thus the team "implanted his consciouness in to that 8 miniutes of parallel time of the victim before death".
We too have been chosen by God to be heroes in our own way, to serve in His mission.

As for time factor wise, I've no scientific background in the concept of time though I do have some inkling that Einstein did propose that time as we know it is actually dependant on the speed of light. Thus if the speed of light where altered, theoretically we go back/forward in time.
Looking in this light (literally and metaphorically), the 2nd coming of Christ may really be totally beyond human comprehension.

The main commander general and coordinator of The ultimate rescue mission is God, we believers are but soldiers chosen for our individual talent, skill, ability (as represented by the lead's injuries) to effect a tiny part of this grand mission. However, we must also never look down on the task we are entrusted with. This is partly mirrored by metaphorsis of the attitude of the lead in the movie.

In the initially "trial runs" of the 8 miniutes, the lead is clearly frustrated by his lack of knowledge of the mission and adopts a "get it over and done with" attitude. Later when he gets over the frustration, he is furious towards for culprit of the the 1st bombing and the 2nd plot. He also even harbours resentment towards the mission leaders who selected him, for not letting his body die naturally and thus leaving him conscious of his separation from his father. Later on nearing the climax, he develops a sense of attachment for all the victims in the 1st bombing and pleads with one of the chiefs in the project to let him try reversing the past, even though he knows that this may endanger the actual him's chances of survival.

During our walk with Chirst, a similar series of that replay occur along the way. We get frustrated with the seemingly impossible teachings of Christ we have to uphold and want to "get it over and done with". Other times we believers harbour anger both towards others (sinners, fellow believers and even God himself), thinking they are making our walk difficult, separating us from God! However each significant stage of our walk with God comes when we sacrifice some selfish desire to place of what God deems as a greater good.

In conclusion, let us perserve on in our walk with Him, for eventually "all things will be made good again through His ways".

For the perserving believer
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
2 Timothy 4:7

In praise of God's ultimate mission
For the old order of things has passed away. He who is seated on the throne said "I am making everything new"
Revelations 21:4-5

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Revelations 22:12

Movie Mayhem with God Part 2: The Black Swan

Another movie showing God's wisdom and truth like 告白, and sadly also a cautionary one.

The protaganist of The Black Swan is a ballerina (Natalie Portman's character) obssessed with attaining perfection for both the roles of the White Swan and the Black Swan in the Swan Lake dance.

Her diligence for striving for perfection in mastering both roles eventually drives her into paranoia (her view on a fellow ballerina who seems perfect for the black swan role mutates from sheer petty rivalry into envy and hatred). This then consumes the orginally "innocent White Swan" of her. However in the desperate self-effort to reconcile both sides of her, she goes into self mutilation, homosexual fantascies. However as the self-effort at reconcilation backfires, driving her opposite sides further apart, she finally "snaps and ends up killing herself".

A bit scared after watching the movie. This feeling I had after watching it was of fear and horror, as opposed to heavy-ladenness when watching 告白. Maybe it was because I had watched the movie when I was in the full eye of the storm turmoil with my ex-boss and ex-supervisor at my previous company then.

Part of my mental pysche was veering into Black Swan mode full speed ahead. Nasty, evil and even downright malicious thoughts against my supervisor festered continuously in my mind due to the immense stress I was under. This vicious cycle took a heavy emotional and spiritual toil on me then. Thankfully God stepped in the nick of time with an act of what seems like a disaster to me then, but was in effect a miracle.

That has been put behind, though not forgotten. The cautionary tale of this movie is more of when we rely on self effort in defining and striving for what we think is right versus wrong, we unknowingly get sucked into the confusion where eventually our faith in God dies, and we too die.

Can anyone teach knowledge to God, since even He judges the highest?
Job 21:22

The unbearable weight of not forgiving

For all who are struggling with the issue of why forgiveness is absolutely necessary, I highly recommend "Confessions" . I won't mention any specific spoilers to the show as I hope you all will watch it but I will still give a brief description of the movie's theme.

Due to the main character's motive, a horrifyingly wilful and selfish action of his sparks off a series of chain reactions with the other characters involved. However due to the inability of any of the characters involved in the movie to forgive one another, everyone ends up in "living hell" The concluding part of the movie depicts the main character's visualisation of what hell for him is and it is indeed his "press of the button" that triggered it. (Watch the movie to fully understand what I mean as it can be taken both literally and metaphorically.) I was very impacted after the movie due to its dark theme and felt quite heavy as I walked out of the cinema. It is a cautionary tale to me on how revenge can come full circle back to us when we fail to forgive. When we forgive others, we not just make it better for them, we actually make it better for ourselves. Amen.

Do not take revenge, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written: "It is mine to avenge, I will repay" says the Lord.
Romans 12:19

Do not say "I will pay you back for this wrong" Wait for the Lord, and he will avenge you.
Proverbs 20:22

For if you forgive other people who sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14-15