This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
The Artist
Plot Overview
When a copycat, angel-pose killer takes up the work of his idol
dubbed The Artist (John Malkovich) who's now incarcerated on death
row, a psychology majored detective Mary Kelly (Melissa Roxburgh)
interviews the convict under the tutelage of her veteran partner Jake
Doyle (Martin Lawrence) who'd earlier put him away. They've hopes
of learning something from him. He'll help them in exchange for
having his sentence commuted to life. Games are played, and when they
close in on the new killer, I'm reminded of the timeless words
of Pogo: “We have met the enemy and they are us.”
Ideology
Det. Doyle
makes a dynamic entrance at the crime scene a half hour late, holding
a large white cup of coffee in front of his dark black face. So that's
what was keeping him, a late night. Visually, we we've just been given
a sense of time delay and a contrasting of black & white. Skin
color-wise we're looking at a negative, reversed stereotypes,
the black man having done some “fine detective work” the
first time around and now working lead, while the white detective
is playing catchup and the jailbird is white, too. We're given
an historical backdrop as well: the former case, the childhoods
of the principals, the Renaissance period of the paintings, their
biblical scene subjects, and the prehistory of the creation of the
angels including Lucifer. Ah, since the movie came out for black
history month, this is the place to allude to it, but the allusion,
I fear, would escape a lot of people.
For those not settled in the sands of
time, I offer this remedial history lesson, with apologies to those
who don't need it. The biblical story is widely known of Adam &
Eve's temptation and fall in the Garden of Eden, how the woman ate
the forbidden fruit and gave it to her husband to eat (Gen. 3:6), God responding by increasing
the severity of the woman's childbirth pains (Gen. 3:16) and making man's toil onerous
(Gen. 3:17-19.) What is less well
known—except in places like the Bible Belt—is a redo of
sorts to ameliorate man's difficult labor. Noah's father Lamech had
(Gen. 5:29) “called his name
Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil
of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.”
They still had to follow the earlier template to get a reprieve. Instead
of the forbidden tree to be respected by the first couple, there was
old man Noah whose work break was to be respected by his three sons:
(Gen. 6:10) “And Noah begat
three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” They formed themselves
into two pairs: the eldest Japheth & Shem, and the youngest Ham
paired with his own son Canaan making the numbers even. By way of
analogy from a May Astor novel, we see “Walter Carewe &
his enchanting Beatrice, who … bore him their three children:
Virginia, Charles, born a year apart, … Elsie, two years younger.
… Virginia and Charlie had been a unit within their family
unit. Dad and Mum were a unit. Elsie was another unit, like a small
soft bud attached to the Mum and Dad unit” (16–19). Noah
fortified himself with wine before invoking blessings on his
paired sons, as later would Isaac with savory venison before blessing
Esau. The (red) yakut wine of Turkey is a blend of four
grapes—actually two pairs—so the numbers correspond.
In the Genesis account of the Flood, is a mystery woman, the mother of Ham. (Gen. 9:18-19) “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” Let's look agiin at Noah's story (Jasher 5:14-17):
And the Lord said unto Noah, Take unto thee a wife, and beget children, for I have seen thee righteous before me in this generation. And thou shalt raise up seed, and thy children with thee, in the midst of the earth; and Noah went and took a wife, and he chose Naamah the daughter of Enoch, and she was five hundred and eighty years old. And Noah was four hundred and ninety-eight years old, when he took Naamah for a wife. And Naamah conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Japheth, saying, God has enlarged me in the earth; and she conceived again and bare a son, and he called his name Shem, saying, God has made me a remnant, to raise up seed in the midst of the earth.
Shem and Japheth were full brothers, Ham was born at a later date (the youngest, see Gen. 9:24) perhaps from a different mother. Noah's wife was older than he was. Perhaps at 580+ years she was no longer able to bear children after the first two. She didn't have any more after the flood, even though it was a time to repopulate the earth. Maybe she stopped bearing before the flood. Ham could then have been stepbrother of the other two.
Researcher Mark DeWayne Combs posits that, “Although Jasher specifically references the births of Japheth and Shem, there is no such reference to the birth of Ham. … that Ham may have been much younger than his brothers and that he may have had a different mother” (389). Combs also observes, “Fathering a child, particularly a son, through a handmaiden or servant girl would not have been an uncommon or forbidden practice in that time period” (165). Historian Kenneth M. Stampp remarks that “Apologists for slavery traced the history of servitude back to the dawn of civilization and showed that it had always existed in some form until their own day” (14).
Come the deluge and the ark's passengers could well be a model for, (James 5:13) “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.” There was undoubtedly a lot of distress on their voyage occasioning a lot of prayer, and their eventual landfall would have been accompanied by much celebration. As ordained minister Tom Dooley points out, “Such a long period of ark living must have been quite tiresome. No doubt Noah's family was thankful for their safety and provisions; however, one could imagine them becoming restless, ready to get their feet on dry land again” (59.)
When (Jasher 6:40-41) “they all went out from the ark, they went and returned every one to his way and to his place, and Noah and his sons dwelt in the land.” They'd been cooped up together long enough, so now they spread out somewhat according to some preestablished pecking order. God (Jasher 6:42) “said unto them, Be fruitful and fill all the earth; become strong.” To become strong meant, among other things, taking their needed meds when sick, along the lines of, (James 5:14-15) “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” Children are always getting sick. Here it seemed to be Canaan's turn whose elders would have been his father Ham and grandfather Noah. Oil in Bible times was a medication, (Luke 10:34) “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine,” as was, (1Tim. 5:23) “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.” Grapes grow in the summer, but once they're fermented, the wine can be stored throughout the year. Noah got into the store while setting an example for a work break, establishing period(s) of escape from hard work per Lamech's saying. As authoress Marie Kay once described something similar:
“To become happy,” my father and grandfather had often told each other, “to make one forget, yes. That's what wine is for, but never to get one drunk. That is only for derelicts, not for men.” ¶… My grandmother often said, “Merry, yes. Highly merry, well, once in a while. Drunk, never. That's … not for us.” (157–8)
By chance or design this exceptional indulgence interfered—it had to inconvenience someone—with Ham's youngest son Canaan's need, and Ham could well have been the low-status brother from another mother.
Instead of the wily serpent we had Noah's wife as an on-the-spot agent, who since she isn't mentioned, did well incurring no rebuke. She would have made herself scarce giving Noah some space to relax when he started drinking. (1Tim. 2:9-10) “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves … with good works.” Being a virtuous woman (Prov. 31:27) “She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” She would not have let grass grow under her feet but would have gone straight to visit Ham to make adjustments regarding their diminished store of medicinal alcohol, like the homespun heroine in an Andrew Taylor novel:
Mrs Arabella was a woman of decision. Having made up her mind to do something, she did not postpone it and did not permit half-measures. The inoculation of the household was arranged the following day and put into practice on the day after. (175)
In our movie the serial killer, The Artist, in his youth disobeyed his mother who castigated him for his drawings, “No more religious sh!t. … Nothing but brainwash. Draw a dog or a real live person.” He went back to his religious drawings to learn from the masters.
Ham showed up after his mom's visit, at Noah's tent to check out the cause. He fell to temptation by mocking his dad to his two brothers, but they would have none of it. This is parallel to Eve earlier failing first then offering the fruit to Adam who accepted it, but here the older brothers did not go along with Ham, so we'd expect them to receive a blessing rather than a curse such as it was. The distribution of labor had to be readjusted to account for the new workers' holiday(s), and Ham for his insolence left himself and his family line open to taking up the slack. Depicted below is that scene rendered in a Civil War vintage woodcut, made after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German painter, 1794–1872) from his archive, published in 1877.
The alternate image text by licensor iStock.com/Getty Images explains what happened here to Noah and his fermented grapes: “When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it on their shoulders. Then they walked in backwards and covered up their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so they did not see their father's nakedness (Genesis 9:21-23).” They covered the old man to prevent him from catching a chill in the mountains as it was no longer summer. Ham's show of disrespect to their patriarch is like the treatment of a revered matriarch in a Seymour novel:
I don't think
she'll be pleased to know that her picture is now a source of amusement
throughout Naples. When she knows, and she soon will—it's
inevitable—that her daughter … is in part responsible
for her being photographed with bare thighs and most of her arse
on display, I believe she'll feel resentful towards you.
(131)
In the movie we are told of Det. Mary Kelly in her youth wearing an objectionable shade of nail polish to get under her dad's skin. He exercised an interesting form of punishment not unlike one in a Dwight Taylor's story, “Billie.”
The only solution according to the aunt, was a good spanking. On the occasion of these visits, the father (the sooner to end them, I imagine) would agree that he had been lax in his discipline and, taking Billie into his study, he would close the door and pull up his pant's leg. “Now yell,” he would advise his daughter, and while Billie yelled, he would whack himself forcibly on the fat of his leg, ten or twenty times, so that the reassuring sound of flesh meeting flesh would float to the ears of his sister waiting in the next room.
“Daddy sometimes hurt himself quite badly,” added Billie reflectively, when she first told me this story. “Especially when I had been especially bad.” (16)
Mary first felt guilty at her father's pain, then she inured herself to it. Her dad took her for frequent trips to confession, and she responded by seducing the priest in the confessional; then she married him to irk her father. Now her father is on his death bed and she won't come to visit. I'm not even going to say what happened to The Artist's mom. These two associates of the lead detective have brought with them a load of baggage.
Ham had put himself in the same jeopardy according to, (Prov. 30:17) “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” Especially pertinent in this case is Noah's control over the animals including the raven (Gen. 8:7) and he is not unique, at least not in literature. Novelist Ted Bell writes of a chief inspector who “had been beaten to within an inch of his life and nearly pecked to death by countless killer ravens. All the while locked inside the cage of a Victorian aviary” (357.) In the movie are shown caged doves pecking, one peck being concurrent with a spike driven into one of the victim's flesh.
Mary's father was named Elias. Elias is the Greek form
of the Hebrew name Elijah. Elijah was famously known for calling down
fire from heaven (1Kings 18:36-38)
after first dousing the wood fuel with water. His departure from this
world as a miraculous event was attended by his successor Elisha:
(2Kings 2:7-10.) Elisha is remembered
for his encounter with some youths who mocked him for not having a
covering of hair on his head; they got mauled by beasts. (2Kings 2:23-24) “And … as
he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of
the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head;
go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and
cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she
bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”
There's a parity of eye loss and servitude
given in (Exodus 21:26) “And
if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that
it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.” Ham
and his line—represented by Canaan in his lineage—could
be given servitude rather than mutilation. This would be in keeping
with the sentiment of Job in, (Job 31:7-8) “If my step hath turned
out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any
blot hath cleaved to mine hands; Then let me sow, and let another
eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out.” In that woodcut-derived
picture above we see Ham after disregarding his mom's caution, checking
up on his dad, getting carried away by an eyeful of the dishabille
inebriate, and gesturing with his hands to his brothers. If he were
to “sow, and another eat” and his “offspring
be rooted out,” that would mean becoming a slave and his
offspring being carried away in slavery. Okay.
The Bible's account leans towards the latter. (Gen. 9:24-27) “And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” When Noah woke up, he blessed as a pair the lines of his two respectful sons and cursed Ham's line—pairing Ham with his youngest son Canaan as was Noah's wont to go by twos—giving them servitude to his other two sons'. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.”
Ham's youngest son Canaan is the
particularly noted recipient of the punishment. Later when the Israelis
invaded the promised land, the Canaanites were due for destruction,
but the Gibeonite branch (the Hivites of Joshua 11:19 & Gen. 10:15-17) did a deal with Joshua
who was the Jewish leader. They'd heard what happened to other Canaanite
tribes, so they sent ambassadors dressed as if they'd come from a
long journey (Joshua 9:3-6) and
persuaded Joshua to make a league with this “distant”
tribe. When it was discovered they'd tricked Joshua into sparing them,
(Joshua 9:24-27) he made them
bondmen, which was more to their liking. If this trick is indicative
of the character of the original Canaan, he might well have been
malingering to get out of his chores, which would also help explain Noah's
hesitation to coddle him with wine. And by the way, the prison housing The
Artist is located in Canaan, Arkansas as seen by the address on his mail.
The dynamic of hoarding is addressed in (James 5:4) “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.” The God of rest would have the workers spend a portion of their earnings for fun and relaxation—they deserved it. The hoarder would fraudulently hold back that portion of their due, giving them bare sustenance. Curiously, the hoarder would have his skin blackened (James 5:3) as a witness against him.
More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush, Ham's oldest son (Gen. 10:6,) Cush meaning black in Hebrew, having settled in Africa, some of his to become in later years African slaves. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that, “As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa” (122). Dr. Ide adds, “Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest” (62). A description of their lot might be got from a 1924 Thomas Shastid Novel, about “the tumult which I heard as I came toward the shore!”
“A caravan of slaves,” replied the bishop. “Gone now. Driven through the village like cattle, they are on their way to a larger place south. There a great ship awaits them. It will take them over to islands in the west—to labor, to sorrow, to die.”
“But I thought such things had been banished by law.”
“Here, as in Starlight, laws are often broken.” (160–1)
Their influence in America until the 1930's is briefly described by novelist George S. Schuyler:
When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation. The presence of the Negro as an under class had also made of Dixie a unique part of the United States. There, despite the trend to industrialization, life was a little different, a little pleasanter, a little softer. There was contrast and variety, which was rare in a nation where standardization had progressed to such an extent that a traveler didn't know what town he was in until someone informed him. The South had always been identified with the Negro, and vice versa, and its most pleasant memories treasured in song and story, were built around this pariah class.
The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white peon, were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only satisfaction and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks. (141–2)
Here in “Mindcage” we find a fallout of the so-called “White man's burden” but here with the “white man” being black and the two burdening him being white, but with identical root cause of the trouble.
Production Values
“” (2022) was directed by Mauro Borrelli. It was written by Reggie Keyohara III. It stars Martin Lawrence, Melissa Roxburgh and John Malkovich. Malkovich is great in his chilling psycho role. The other two leads bring up the rear well enough as far as they can. The story is kind of jumbled, so there's not a whole lot good acting can do to redeem it.
It's rated R. There's some good camera work employing dutch angles to advantage. The dialogue, sad to say, is rather ho hum. The “angels” are awesome. The mystery keeps us guessing till the end. Runtime is 1 hour 36 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This is actually a good one for black history month, if you are familiar with their biblical origins to begin with and can handle switched roles. Otherwise, I'm afraid, it would go right over your head. Horror has been done better but it'll do.
The priest who presumably
left the priesthood to get married seems to be still in good
graces with the church. He prays before meals, got married in Saint
Mary's Cathedral, and goes on pilgrimage to Rome. Does the cooking
at home and doesn't argue with his wife. Uses sage in the kitchen,
which he once burned in the sanctuary.
A recipe described for a deadly poison
is real enough. You might want to be careful not to let unstable souls
see this film. Just saying.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769, 1873. Print. Software.
The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo lithographic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print, Web.
Astor, Mary. Incredible Charlie Carewe. Copyright © 1960 Mary Astor. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1960. Print.
Bell, Ted. Patriot. Copyright © 2015 by Theodore A. Bell. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Print.
Chay, Marie. Pilgrim's Pride. Copyright © 1961 by Marie Chay. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. Print.
Combs, Mark DeWayne. End the Beginning. USA: Splinter in the Mind's Eye Pub., 2014. Print.
Dooley, Tom. The True Story of Noah's Ark. Copyright © 2003 by Tom Dooley. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2016. Print.
Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.
Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homophobia and Heterosexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.
Schuyler, George S. Black No More. Copyright, 1931, by The Macaulay Company. Reprint by College Park, Maryland: McGrath Publishing Company, 1969. Print.
Seymour, Gerald. The Collaborator. Copyright © 2009 Gerald Seymour. New York: The Overlook Press, 2011. Print.
Shastid M.D., LL.B. Sc.D. etc, Thomas Hall. Who Shall Command Thy Heart? Copyright 1924 in the United States of America by Thomas Hall Shastid. Publisher to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan: George Wahr, 1924. Print.
Stampp, Kenneth M., Professor of American History at the University
of California (Berkeley).
The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the
Ante-Bellum South. Vintage Books, 1955. Print.
Taylor, Andrew. The Scent of Death. Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2013. London: HarperCollinsPublishers. Print.
Taylor, Dwight. Joy Ride. © 1959 by Dwight Taylor. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1959. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org