Hell, the movie

The opening: A big city. A sunny day. Silent. Then a deep bass sound. Rumble. It starts to get darker on the right half of the screen. Big, black clouds stretching from the ground and up start moving in the way black clouds just shouldn't. Through small cracks in the clouds - orange light. Fire. Overhead - the undersides of flames, much like they look when you view a burning beam from underneath. Total blackness. Silent. Keep for 10 seconds. Orange shapes in the darkness, half human outline, half flame, flying/swimming. But the black engulfs the light, making the shapes appear thin. Flames in black smoke. Faces are recognizable. Yellow jet flames with screaming heads on them. But there is no sound. One pair of eyes look out at you before it is torn away by the black current.       Scene goes on for slightly too long, with variations in the way the pain is displayed. End of hell scene: Young woman's face becomes large on the screen. It is bathed in red light. We see her head being splattered. Sound of crunching bones / water melon being chopped open. Black. Switch scenes: A lot of blue. A lot of green. A lot of white. A park-like landscape. Camera panning across landscape from left to right. An elderly lady sits on a bench, right side of screen, looking towards the screen's left: «My daughter, she is ... there, isn't she?» Voice from outside the screen answers: «You did a very good job, Mrs Robinson. Satan's army could have grown too large, and - » theatrical pause «Earth would have gone on as it did, with its crime, its filth and its disbelief. You saved souls!» Mrs Robinson looks down at her hands, which are doing their accustomed birdfeeding motions. Pause. «So many of my friends, the friendly greengrocer, my neighbours, their kids, my daughter. So many of them are ... not here!» Camera moving a little bit further to the right, revealing a male figure a bit too tall to be human. A somewhat machine-like face. Sleek wings on its back reveal it to be an angel. «But we are your friends now.» Break off scene. Mr. Robinson, waking up in bed. Startled. Sweating. Spartan bedroom. Looks at the crucifix on the wall. Walks to the phone and calls her daughter. Voicemail: «Hi, this is Bee. I am off skiing for the week-end. John, if it's you, don't forget to feed the cat. Mom, if it's you, I hope you have a great trip to the museum with your church group. Dad, if it's you, give mom a call will ya?» Sunshine outside. Mrs Robinson eats her breakfast, looking out at the city street. It's early morning. Turns on radio. Generic broadcast / sports. Life in slow motion. Mrs Robinson puts on her coat and goes outside. She meanders about, and ends up at the greengrocer's. She walks around, picks a few vegetables, wanders to the counter, sees the greengrocer. Flash! We see a half-second glimpse from her Hell-dream, a man in flames, and we recognize the face as the greengrocer's. She becomes unsteady. Greengrocer looks at her worriedly, «Are you OK, Mrs. Robinson?» «Yes, yes, please forgive me. Just ... flashes.» The movie goes on. Some drama. Meeting with her daughter, the disbeliever. Red face! Conflict, and up through the dialectical levels. Starting to doubt her own beliefs, but also her own sanity. Getting The Flash whenever she recognizes someone she dreamt of as being in Hell. Including a small girl. At the greengrocer's again. The Flash, but she has gotten more used to it by now. «Can you ... forgive me?» she asks. «For what?» asks the greengrocer. «For ...» she fumbles, «... Hell. For believing you will go to Hell.» Silence. «It's God's will. His decision. I should feel it's good, but ... I don't. But I believe. Forgive me.» «I don't know what to say. Mrs. Robinson. You're a nice, old woman, and I ...» - awkward silence - «... I don't believe in Hell, like you do. There's nothing for me to forgive.» Silence. «I ... I am sorry, I don't know what came over me.» Mrs Robinson packs up he groceries and leaves. Story tenses to climax, with Mrs Robinson losing her belief, fighting against it, regaining it through anger with her daughter and her «mocking disbelief» - and at the end, the black clouds come rolling in. Black Back at the bench in the park, where we left her, with the angel. «Could I ... ask you something? It's about love.» «Go on,» says the angel. We move around her, and now see her from the front. She looks up at us, determined yet with open, blue eyes: «Could I ... take the place of my daughter?» THE END

Religious tolerance? Afghanistan's constitution simultaneously embraces religious liberty and sharia, or Islamic law, under which those who turn away from Islam can be sentenced to death. Even moderate Muslim clerics, as well as members of Rahman's own family, have said that death is the only fair and logical punishment for the medical-aid worker under Afghanistan's religiously based legal system. How wonderful that Christians these days worry about religious freedom. It really is. For they didn't always give many discarded buttons' worth about the individual's choice of religious outlook. But let us hope it stays this way, that Christianity stays secularized and tolerant, for it is not given that it will. For when the catholic church makes Mother Theresa a saint, the pope redeems the crusades and North Dakota reinstates the religious law against abortion, we may only be seeing the beginning of a bad reversal, when Christians will be no more "moderate" than the above mentioned Afghan muslims. It's at times like this that I wish more strongly than usual that all the world was secular - atheists! But then again, even that kind of law has been tried ...

V for Vendetta It sees to be the movie for revolutionary libertarians for the season: http://wconger.blogspot.com/2006/03/exhorting-right-of-revolution.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer132.html The anarchists are also chiming in, though they are displeased that the movie doesn't tell the people that no revolution is a proper revolution unless it removes the state permanently: http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060314074847304

Chris Tame Sad news for those of us who have met the man (from the Mutualist blog): Chris R. Tame, R.I.P.