Would you go to see a film about a pregnant New York waitress from a deprived background – estranged from her family, dumped by her lover, fired for being late, and about to arrange an abortion? Really?

If you said no, you would certainly be affirmed in your decision by critics at the top Entertainment sections. Independent upstart Metanoia Films’ first effort (Bella, 2006) was roundly trashed, as this sample from Rotten Tomatoes shows:

- “Bella is certainly a sweet, life-affirming picture, but it’s just not authentic or captivating enough to justify its wildly concocted scenario.” – Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times -

“A barely disguised anti-abortion tract, Bella is simple-minded, heavy-handed and as subtle as a gorilla in a tutu.” – Tom Long, Detroit News -

“… defiantly unsubtle, structurally clunky specimen. ” – Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly -

“A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless — sorry, we meant poetic– and the false beard on the central character’s face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.” – Desson Thompson, Washington Post

All from the “cream of the crop” critics, compiled at Rotten Tomatoes, where the film averaged a low 36% rating

New York Times reporter Stephen Holden dismissed Bella as a “saccharine trifle” and worse:

If Bella (the title doesn’t make sense until the last scene) is a mediocre cup of mush, the response to it suggests how desperate some people are for an urban fairy tale with a happy ending, no matter how ludicrous.

The Toronto Star didn’t get around to running a review of Bella by Susan Walker until April 11, 2008. But under the circumstances, why did the Star run a review at all? Ah, there is a story in that …

But what did the audience think?

Bella prompted a sudden second look when it won the 2006 Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice award – that, of course, is the audience rating, not the critics’ rating. As Hollywood Reporter (September 27, 2006) announced breathlessly

Hollywood handicappers always think they know who stands to win top honors at film festivals, but as we saw in Toronto earlier this month surprises are always possible. Going into the festival, absolutely no one, including the team of filmmakers that made “Bella,” ever imagined it would capture the People’s Choice Award voted on by festival audiences. Now in the wake of “Bella’s” breakthrough victory, it’s being screened for domestic distributors whose interest in acquiring the heartwarming drama is understandably greater than it was only a few weeks earlier.

And Rotten Tomatoes grudgingly conceded,

Consensus: A sweet, but ultimately pedestrian drama. Critics labeled Bella as a simplistic and mostly pedestrian, but positive word of mouth gave this tiny indie surprising theatrical legs.

Indeed, Bella soared in audience popularity in 2007, winning Best Picture and Best Actor at the 2008 MovieGuide Awards. It was also #1 in a New York Times’ readers’ poll, and at Yahoo and Fandango (WorldNetDaily, November 3, 2007) , as well winning as many other awards and honours – and doing just fine at the box office.

One reason Bella was trashed by elite critics is that they apparently perceived the film as anti-choice or even anti-abortion. To them, that meant that it was unrealistic about the limited and possibly unlivable future of working class people.

True, Bella has been enthusiastically plugged by prolife and profamily groups, but the film is in no sense an anti-abortion tract. The word abortion is not used, though the subject is discussed (“termination).” Jose obviously does not want his new friend Nina to abort her baby, but he refrains from offering “arguments” against it. He has a much larger project in mind, as we shall see.

The most interesting question about the film’s popularity is, why didn’t the elite critics’ condemnation matter much? Two reasons, I suspect: Not only is there a huge divide between elite culture and popular culture in North America, but elite culture is losing its hold on the Internet, which is fast becoming the primary medium of communication. For example, recent stats (April 15, 2008) show that time spent at news media Web sites is declining. Web users merely drive by and then go on to seek a variety of alternative views.

Bella and the design of life

If I told you exactly how I think Bella relates to intelligent design, I would spoil critical scenes and, – worse – tempt you to read it as some kind of an allegory. So let me hint: Nina starts out assuming that life is determined in advance, and it is very limited. No one cares, and no one will ever care what she does. Therefore, she must have an abortion.

She doesn’t exactly “want” an abortion. It would be more accurate to say that she cannot imagine a future in which she did not have one. An abortion will accomplish the only goal she can imagine: set her back on the treadmill to nowhere instead of tipping her into the abyss of nothingness. And that is her future – her full stop is delayed a while.

We are not encouraged to judge Nina for her past or proposed choices, but rather to see them in the context of her limited expectations.

But Jose, the chef at Nina’s former workplace, has plunged into the abyss himself. He has emerged, knowing that life is not as Nina thinks. On the contrary, there is a design to life, and that design is much larger and more promising than we usually imagine. If we cooperate with it, we become our best selves. If we don’t, we wander, aimless and self-destructive, forever bound by limits of our own making. Jose impulsively walks away from his frantic kitchen and sets out to demonstrate that to Nina. 

He senses that he is one of the few men who can truly relate to the dilemma Nina and many other pregnant single women face. His own life, like theirs, was forever altered by the outcome of a few moments of unwise choices. After Nina learns Jose’s story, she will not likely ever say to him, “You don’t understand what it is like.” He does understand.

Bella avoids tipping over into mere sentiment in large part because Jose’s close family are the survivors of his tragedy. Their relationships are all they were left with – love among the ruins.

Bella is a beautiful film, and I can think of no higher praise than to say it is loved by the right people – and hated by the right people as well. Only at the very end do we discover the meaning of the title, and I will not spoil that for you.

Redemption motif: Redeeming the Latin lead

For Eduardo Verastegui, co-owner of production company Metanoia Films, the role of Jose was the outcome of a profound personal discovery and commitment. As Deborah Gyapong relates, in Western Catholic Reporter (May 28, 2007),

Verastegui had reached the zenith of Mexican celebrity as a soap opera star and singer who had toured at least 13 countries to sold-out concerts. He’d appeared as Jennifer Lopez’s love interest in her popular music video Ain’t It Funny. His growing Hollywood TV and movie credits included the starring role in the 20th Century Fox movie Chasing Papi and a co-starring role in the independent film Meet Me in Miami. He’d been listed as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world in People en Espanol.

So far, Verastegui was well on the way to a career as a conventional Latin star, but

In Los Angeles, while studying English, he found himself drawn to a deeper faith in Christ through his devout Catholic teacher. He began to see all the reasons he had wanted to be an actor – fame, money and pleasure – as empty and vain. He realized he’d been typecast into portraying the unfaithful, lying Latin lover and playing those parts promoted negative stereotypes. The media portrayal of Hispanics in general demeaned both men and women, resembling nothing like the dignity and beauty of his mother and sisters in Mexico.

He understood he had hurt people through the work he had done and the messages in his movies were “poisoning society.”

“It broke my heart,” the actor told the annual Rose Dinner in Ottawa May 10, following the annual March for Life in Ottawa.

“I realized I had offended God.”

Verastegui spent months in tears, sold his goods, and vowed never to play another role that demeaned his culture.

Later, he ran into director Alejandro Monteverdi, co-writer of the screenplay with Patrick Million, and they formed an independent film company to produce the film, which was shot in New York in 24 days. 

Resources:

Bella official site

Bella Fan Club

Bella trailer

Bella box office

by Denyse O’Leary

ARN correspondent

Before this arts site got started, I had been reviewing movies and books that are relevant to the intelligent design controversy at the regular ARN site. Here are brief intros and links to reviews that this site’s users might enjoy. I will add a link to this post to my future posts, so you can get back here if you are looking for a past review.

March of the Penguins: Why there was a fuss about the “intelligent design” implications of this film

Should you permit your children to see March of the Penguins? Not if you want to raise them as unquestioning Darwinists.

What the Bleep Do We Know?: Well, somehow, I don’t think we know this, anyway …

This film addresses the reasons, based in quantum mechanics, for doubting the radical materialist view of the universe. I’m all for doubting radical materialism, but I don’t quite think this approach is the answer, and here’s why.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Why was this tale of devilry linked to intelligent design theory? The only connection – but it is certainly an interesting one – is the film’s portrayal of what happens when an apparent truth cannot be accepted by a society that is committed to an ideology that rules that truth out of bounds.

Science fiction: Rob Sawyer takes on intelligent design in The Calculating God What if the aliens land, and they think the universe shows evidence of intelligent design? Even more remarkably, they are much more interested in Toronto (Canada) than in Washington or New York? Why?

Darwinian Fairy-Tales: Why evolutionary psychology is nonsense In Darwinian Fairy-Tales, agnostic Australian philosopher David Stove minces evolutionary psychology. The problem is that evo psycho is true to Darwinian theory but not to human experience.

Tech guru George Gilder: Why ID is onto something! One thing I learned from covering the ID controversy is that intelligent design makes many more converts among engineers than among biologists. I think that is because engineers have a much clearer grasp of the critical question, “how, exactly.” They must make processes work every day. So, for example, if six different processes involving cellular machinery consisting of hundreds of molecules must randomly self-assemble by means of natural selection, what, exactly, is the probability of success in given time frame? Gilder addresses Darwinism in this light.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O’Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada’s Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

We look to film for entertainment, escape, and occasionally to explore the deeper issues of life. But can film be an effective medium to explore the material/non-material boundary?

Damah is a non-profit organization that encourages an emerging generation of filmmakers from diverse perspectives to voice the spiritual aspect of the human experience through film and provides a forum for these artists to develop, discuss and display their vision.

In January, 2001, a group of individuals met to brainstorm about how they could support artists who desired to explore spirituality. They had a desire to create an event where people from a wide spectrum of spiritual backgrounds could come together to form a community where ideas, thoughts and perspectives on the spiritual aspect of life could be explored through the art of the short film.

The cream-of-the-crop from the first six Damah Film Festivals are available on DVD, and a few of these short films can be viewed for free online. For an example of one that drifts into the ID space check out Gabrielle. This 15 minute film tells the story of an unborn soul who has to make the decision whether or not to be born. The materialist worldview proclaims that we are born, we pay taxes, and we die. Is there more to life then that? Where do souls come from? Where do souls go? Are we more than a collection of chemicals that decompose when we die? These are all worthy questions raised by Gabrielle.

Those of you who can’t make the trip to L.A. for the next Damah Film Festival in May 2007, might want to check out the Altarnet Film Society which is setting up chapters around the country to watch and discuss the Damah short films.

Reviewed by Tom Magnuson
1997 Drama/Sci-Fi (PG), directed by Robert Zemeckis, 153 min, IMDb Info

Many are intrigued by the possibility of other advanced civilizations in the cosmos. The interest ranges from the general public to gifted scientists such as Carl Sagan, whose book Contact was the inspiration for a 1997 blockbuster film. Contact portrays the scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) by the passionate Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodi Foster). Although Sagan was a outspoken public champion for a materialistic worldview, this movie raises many interesting discussion questions about the nature of our universe, the nature of reality, and the assumptions behind our worldviews.

The tensions in the film range from the career confrontations between Ellie and her former mentor Dr. David Drumlin, and worldview encounters between Ellie and religionist Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey).

While atheistic scientist Ellie is earnestly searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, Palmer claims to have already made contact with just such an intelligence: God. Ellie seeks empirical proof for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent material beings, while Palmer’s experience with God (intelligent designer) is more faith based. Ellie defines reality as only the space-time continuum, while Palmer is willing to allow for the extra-natural, as evidenced by our every day encounters with immaterial thoughts, emotions, and laws of logic and reason. At one point Palmer asks Ellie to empirically prove that she loved her father. This theme is repeated through the film. Some things or notions cannot be empirically established and, yet, they are just as real as those entities that can be.

Ellie Arroway asks questions and gives advice. “What if science simply revealed that an intelligent designer never existed in the first place?” “There’s no chance that your had this experience (with a personal intelligent designer) because a part of you needed to have it?” She claims that a personal intelligent designer did not give any proof of its existence in the material world, and that believers may be self-deluded. She shows her relativistic worldview, which naturally flows from her atheism, by encouraging young students to “keep searching for your own answers (their individual Truth of reality).”

Father Joss is a thoughtful and bright man. He claims that science cannot give man ultimate meaning, and is supposed to be a pursuit of the total Truth of reality, even if unavoidable metaphysical conclusions arise. He attacks scientific materialism by chastising those scientists who deify technology and limit their search for the Truth of reality to the material realm.

One mantra through the film is that if we are the only intelligent beings in the cosmos, then it seems “like an awful waste of space.” However, very recent discoveries have revealed that the mass density of the cosmos requires that it be as expansive as it is, for galaxies, and stars, and even one life habitable planet to form. In fact, the fine-tuning is astounding, better than one part in 10⁶⁰. Even more finely tuned to allow for the existence of life in the cosmos is the dark energy density term, better than one part in 10¹²⁰. This fine-tunedness is important to note, because Carl Sagan made his appeal for millions of advanced civilizations in the cosmos based on the Drake Equation. The equation makes many assumptions, such as the materialist’s view that life springs easily from non-living materials and is tenacious once it does so.

Dr. Arroway’s search of extraterrestrial intelligence is tireless. Early in the film, she is momentarily fooled by the beat of a natural signal source, a pulsar. When Dr. Arroway and her colleagues discover a message of specified complexity, a pulse sequence of prime numbers from 2 to 101, the universal language of math was recognized immediately as coming from an intelligent source. As the signal continued, it became even more complex; the blueprints to build a transport machine to take someone to the Vega system.

In an ironic twist, Ellie experiences an existential dilemma. A life-changing contact occurs, as she travels to the Vega system and is given the materialist’s meaning of life: the only thing we have found to make this emptiness (and ultimate meaninglessness) bearable is each other. But when she returned to Earth there is no empirical proof that she had this experience. The skeptics ask her if she wants them to take her experience on faith. She replies that everything she knows in her mind tells her it was real.

In its own unique way, Contact offers a taste of drama, romance, suspense, and science fiction. It is truly a great film which touches the emotions and the intellect.

Discussion questions:

1. Discuss how Contact could have had a more compelling and balanced discussion on the detection of intelligent agency. For instance, Ellie could have recognized that the DNA information in every cell in every living creature is a hallmark of intelligent agency, being much more complex than the prime number sequence from the Vega system, or the blueprint for the transport machine that she intuitively recognized as coming from intelligence. She would have realized that the personal intelligent designer did leave proof of its existence, and she could have expressed that to Palmer Joss.
2. The question regarding a supernatural Intelligent Designer “wasting so much space” by creating the vast cosmos for one advanced civilization is ubiquitous from the materialist’s camp. How would you answer this challenge? (hint: resources available on ARN, such as The Privileged Planet).
3. It is important to point out a major error in the film Contact. Ellie claims that there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and if only one in a million had planets, and if one in a million of those planets had life, and if one in a million of those planets had intelligent life (totaling one in 10¹⁸ planets), then there would be millions of civilizations out there. If you do the math, and assume one element of the Drake Equation (that only ½ of stars will have planets), then you have 200 billion stars (2 x 10¹¹). If only one in 10¹⁸ stars having intelligent life in its system of planets, you get zero chance of intelligent life in our galaxy. Even if you expanded that claim to the entire cosmos (10²² stars), half of which have planets, and one in 10¹⁸ stars having intelligent life in its system of planets, you have 5,000 advanced civilizations. But, that number may approach zero, because astrophysicists have now determined that there are nearly 100 parameters that need to be fine-tuned for intelligent life to develop on a planet or moon. Find the Drake Equation, and discuss the assumptions that are required to come to a calculation. Can the number vary across a wide spectrum? Does it require faith to posit that millions of advanced civilizations are in the cosmos?
4. Appeals to Occam’s Razor are made in the film. Look at Occam’s Razor and discuss the validity of using it to come up with correct conclusions. Notably, in the biological sciences, the simplest hypothesis for the observable facts is often incorrect. Discuss some examples.
5. The film attempts to bring to light that there is a certain degree of faith that scientists must exercise in practicing their craft. A claim can be made that science should constantly be questioning its faith in its hypotheses, and look for ways to disprove its theories, even if they do not appear to be lacking or crumbling. Discuss the definition of faith, and whether the practice of science does require a certain amount of faith.