Clint Eastwood and Christ: A Reflection on “Gran Torino”

It’s amazing where you can find Christ.

In many respects, Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Gran Torino, is a bleak affair.  It tells the story of Walt, a traumatised Korean War veteran who deals with the pain of his memories by hiding behind a wall of crusty misanthropy and bitter racism.  Walt’s life is locked into a dead end of re-cycled routine – disguised as “discipline” and “orderliness” – and excessive drinking.  Even his family life has been infected: he is all but estranged from his sons and their families; and now that he is a widower, his life has been reduced to one of lonely isolation.

Jonah 3: 1-5, 10

With popular culture, it’s often the case that its most enduring products tend to be those that receive the least fanfare when they first appear.  Film is a good example of this principle: blockbusters tend to come and go in rapid succession, but the films which stay with us tend to be “quiet achievers” – they win us over with the quality of their writing, filming, and acting rather than the hype which surrounds their release.

John 1:43-51; 1 Samuel 3:1-10

The colourful Scottish comedian, Billy Connelly, while freely admitting that he doesn’t think much of religion, also confesses to being fascinated by American tele-evangelists, and in particular by their oft-stated claim to be in daily communication with God. In one of his shows, he summarised his feelings thus:  “These people say they talk to God and they get their own television shows and pots of money thrown at them – if I were to say I talk to God, I’d be put away so fast I wouldn’t have time to go home and get my pyjamas!”

Mark 1:4-11

There are two things which, for a number of years now, I have believed implicitly.  The first is that the universe has a profound and vast sense of humour.  The second is that it is my particular fate to be the vehicle of its expression.

Matthew 2:1-12

On New Year’s Eve, my wife Sandy and I were invited to a friend’s house to celebrate the arrival of 2009.  It wasn’t a large party, only about 40 people or so, but at one point in the evening, feeling that it was getting a little stuffy inside, I ventured out onto the veranda that ran along the rear of the friend’s house for some fresh air.  Now, the house is located on a hill on the eastern fringes of Melbourne, in an area of pleasant hills and nice views, and by this stage of the evening, dusk was well and truly setting: the sky was partitioned between a thin band of orange light over the horizon and a deeper swathe of night sky.  And looking up I saw a lovely sight: a large crescent moon, low in the western sky; and hovering over and just to the right of it, a single, large bright star.

Luke 2:22-40

After last Thursday’s Christmas Day service, as Sandy and I were wending our way to the door, exchanging Christmas greetings with everyone, we were approached by a couple with three small children.  There was something vaguely familiar about the couple, something that told me I should know who they were – and yet no names leaped out of my subconscious, no bells in my memory rang to rescue me from my confusion.

Luke 1:47-55

 Earlier this week, The Age newspaper published an article that was really a thinly disguised publicity piece promoting a book written by one Catherine Deveny.  Ms Deveny, described in the article as a “broadcaster, comedian, and writer”, writes a weekly column for The Age, and the blurb accompanying the article asserted that she is “controversial and taboo-breaking”.  However, a more straight-forward assessment would be that Ms Deveny is print journalism’s equivalent of a radio shock jock: it’s her job to be provocative and controversial, but only in the negative sense of resorting to mean name-calling and brutal sarcasm in order to convey her opinions.

Mark 13:24-37

In his book, Heretic, the Scottish minister Peter Cameron tells the story of a retired British Army officer who one day discovered that, because of a typing error, he had been officially listed as a major effective from the year 1046.  Now, clearly it was meant to be 1946, but the major wrote a letter to the Ministry of Defence, pointing out the year in which his rank came into effect, and claiming back-pay to the sum of several hundred thousand pounds.  To his very great surprise, he received a response from the Ministry informing him that his claim for back-pack would be allowed.  However, the letter also stated that since he appeared to be the only living survivor of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he was being held personally responsible for the loss of equipment which accompanied that disastrous battle, a loss assessed at several hundred thousand pounds – an amount, as it turned out, that was a few pence more than the back-pay which he had originally claimed.