Telling Secrets

This is one of my favorite films of last year and has quickly moved into one of my all time favorites. The cinematography was incredible and many of the action sequences are some of the best I’ve ever seen. Politically, it doesn’t condone a particular party or philosophy - indeed, any party structure is absent, replaced instead by “the government” and an activist group “the fishes.” Both of these parties are seriously indicted, though the fishes are treated fairly as trying to do the right thing exactly the wrong way (which of course inevitably turns them into the main antagonists of the film). What we are faced with then, is an examination of individual and group responsibility. Our choices as individuals, and the values underlying these choices, make as much difference in the world as do the choices of groups (governmental or otherwise). This is a serious message that Christians need to think seriously about and we must move away from self-interested religious propoganda and sacrifice everything, including our lives as Clive Owen’s protagonist did, to protect and spread beauty, wonder, and life in a world torn by war, hate, paranoia, misplaced patriotism, and self-interested religious propoganda.