The shifting of the tides of faith.

The Movie: Luther, directed by Eric Till
Recommendation: Von Gauzen
Reason: "History and Joseph Fiennes, what more could a girl ask for."

On the list of movies I really never thought I'd ever lay eyes on, Luther may well be near the top. I'm no theological scholar, not even much of a history buff, and though I appreciate Martin Luther's impact on modern Christianity, I didn't think there was a lot about his life and times that was movie worthy. People will make a movie about anything and sometimes, that movie is good. That was certainly the case here, but not in the usual 'oh god, must watch again'. Instead, I really appreciated the discussion that grew from watching the movie with Broomie. We talked about the Protestant Reformation, the impact of the printing press, big hats, plenary indulgences, Catholicism, the gospels of the other eight apostles, the Apostle Paul's severe case of massive jerk syndrome and...well, you get the idea.

On a technical front, the movie was as plain as most historical films. It wasn't shot in the MTV-style. There weren't any rapid jump cuts or pounding nu-metal soundtrack. That would be horribly, horribly wrong. The editing of the early part of the film wasn't good at all-there was no sense of flow or continuity, and the camerawork on the opening scene wasn't solid enough to give a good idea of what was going on. It took me about twenty minutes to figure out that it was in fact Martin Luther getting whomped on by lightning. I just shot a glance at the director's resume, and it looks as though a lot of his previous work has been on TV. That does explain a lot of the choices he made in shooting his scenes-the expectations of the audience are different, and therefore TV directors tend to cater to those expectations.

Joseph Fiennes, subject of Von Gauzen's history-geek crush, was very intense as Martin Luther. I don't think he could be properly played any other way, actually. I think it's valid to acknowledge that his costars did excellent work as well-I can't really pick out a single performance that was bad out of the whole group. If the technical side had held up as well as the script and the acting did, this movie could have really shone.

-90/365 down, 275/365 to go