Vox Lucens

[Thanks to all who visited my site this afternoon and bore with the "test" post--and even commented on it! I am experimenting with FeedFlare, and discovering that this server is incredibly slow.]

I’m going to do something new for this blog, something I don’t think I’ve ever done before–a movie review. It isn’t often that a movie sticks out as being either so good or so bad I actually want to write about it. (Red Dawn would be an exception, on the bad side, but I can hardly even think about it without feeling nauseous, which is not conducive to blogging.) The fact that this concept is rather foreign is probably obvious by the fact that I’m filing this post under “Humor (?)” and “Inspirational,” neither of which really fits.

All introductory comments aside, let’s cut to the chase: Expelled was fantastic. It was thought-provoking, brilliantly produced, and highly entertaining.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am a proud member of the “young-earth creation” crowd, which, if one is to go by this movie, is apparently a kook fringe of society. I tend to think we’re a little more stable–and intellectually honest–than that, so perhaps the vilification took the path of water on a duck’s back, but let me say at the outset that this is no creationistic manifesto.

In fact, it’s not much of a manifesto at all. Ben Stein’s bent towards intelligent design is purposefully obvious, but the point of the movie is not to persuade you that intelligent design is the truth. It’s designed to open the door to a rational debate on the subject–something that has not happened for decades. And that is the first reason I liked it. This 90-minute film recognized the inherent limitations of the persuasive quality of 90-minute films, and still made a profound point. While no one is going to be persuaded to shake their firmly held evolutionary beliefs because of a documentary, they just might be willing to think things through after it.

But the even better reason I liked this movie was the sheer brilliance of its production. As a student–and fan–of effective communication, I could not help but marvel at the elegance (if I may use a Dawkins-esque word) of the documentary. From opening scene to closing credits, it was built around one tantalizing extended metaphor that gave life to the overarching point of the movie. And underneath that extended metaphor, every element of the film, from the cinematography to the backdrops to the abrupt cuts to 60’s-vintage black and white reels, provided the foundational building blocks to the actual dialogue.

No, I’m not going to tell you what that extended metaphor was. I’m hoping, if you haven’t already, that you’ll go see this film and find out for yourself.

My friends in the creationist crowd, if this movie is successful, you and I need to be ready to do our part. We need to be ready to provide the evidence of the Creator. It’s out there, but it has been suppressed in public life for years–and if this movie can serve as a tiny crack in the dam of the establishment, we should be ready to pour through that crack with all the science and logic at our disposal. But let us remember, in the long run, that this science and logic is not the end game; our end goal must be to point all who see us to our Creator. This movie won’t do that…but it just might give you and me the platform we need to impact someone for eternity.

And to think, just the fact that Ben Stein called Richard Dawkins on the carpet would have alone been worth the price of admission.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Humor (?), Inspirational. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.