Quantum of Solace (Retrospective)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Quantum of Solace is a peculiar beast. After twenty-one films, this is the first Bond movie to function as a direct sequel to the one preceding it (Casino Royale). Because of this, it also functions as the first Bond film to have to contend with continuity. Whereas the first twenty films played fast and loose with such progression, the Craig era has made a point of establishing a strict continuity to which the newer films adhere. Picking up just moments after Casino Royale leaves off, Quantum of Solace opens with a beautiful establishing shot over crystalline waters before slamming into high gear in a gut-wrenching car chase through the picturesque Italian hill country. While Casino Royale was a careful film, measured in pace and plotting, Quantum races along at a breakneck rate, barely giving you time to breathe between major action set pieces. Upon release, this was one of the features of the film that critics lamented the most, suggesting that Bond was trying too hard to be like Bourne, with choppy editing and furious action sequences.

Having viewed Quantum of Solace more than a handful of times since its release, I have come to the conclusion that this is one of the more underrated Bond films. As is usually the case, time and distance offers newer, fresher perspectives. And I, for one, believe that it is high time for Quantum of Solace to undergo a serious reevaluation. In order to do this, however, I have to break a personal rule of movie-watching. In this age of continuity obsessed "cinematic universes," or whatever we're calling them now, I have grown more and more affectionate toward an idea that has only become somewhat radical in the past decade or so: that continuity and movie "canon" is, for the most part, trivial. I think that obsessing over these things can restrict a creative endeavor. So I have resolved to stop thinking about most movies or television shows in terms of their respective "canons," and instead elected to only deal with them in their own right. However, when it comes to Quantum of Solace, I believe the only real way to understand and appreciate the subtle nuances in this movie is to view it in light of Casino Royale. More to the point, I believe Quantum should not necessarily be viewed so much as a sequel film, but as the final act of the movie that preceded it.

Casino Royale is a brilliant film that understands the Bond character as Fleming originally wrote him. The film set out to rediscover Fleming's Bond, and what resulted is, for my money, one of the best espionage action-thrillers of all time. But Casino Royale ended on a relatively quiet note. After he is betrayed by the beautiful but tragic Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), the woman he had fallen in love with, James Bond (Daniel Craig) resolves to hunt down the men responsible for her death. Casino Royale ends as Bond prepares to go on the warpath, but there is no real emotional payoff. We leave Bond in a broken state, and in the film's closing moments he begins walling off his soul, hardening into a stone cold killer. This isn't a criticism. Casino Royale set out to demonstrate how Bond became an emotional train wreck, and it does exactly that. But what it doesn't show is the fallout of Bond's choice to harden himself to the world. The movie ends just as Bond makes his choice. Quantum of Solace picks up the story just moments later, and for the next 100 minutes or so proceeds to show us what Bond looks like when driven by pain and fury in an attempt to process his grief. If Casino Royale lacks the traditional bombastic final sequence common to most action movies, then Quantum more than makes up for it by acting as one long, extended climax. The only way to view these two movies is back-to-back, because together they tell one prolonged story. But it's a mistake to follow this story in terms of traditional plot beats. Instead, this is a story more concerned with spinning its yarn through emotional beats.

That's not to say the action sequences in Quantum of Solace are to be ignored. Quite the opposite, actually. I don't think I've ever seen a film with more carefully plotted action scenes. Take, for example, the fact that the four major action sequences are constructed around the traditional elements: water (the boat chase), air (the plane chase), earth (the desert sequence), and fire (the burning hotel in the film's climax). Most action films are concerned with executing action sequences well. Quantum does this, while also going a step further. Director Marc Forster also uses the action sequences to excavate Bond's psychology, an intentional move gleaned from watching behind the scenes reels of Forster discussing his creative decisions in making the film. The opening car chase is jarringly intense, perfectly introducing us to Bond's fury and rage because of Vesper's death coming out of Casino Royale. From there, a brutal hand-to-hand combat sequence sees him dispatch his targets with ruthless efficiency. The final major action sequence is set in a vast desert, meant to mirror the empty and desolate landscape of Bond's soul, before quite literally exploding in flames as Bond takes his revenge against the organization behind Vesper's betrayal. The final scene is filmed in the snow and the cold, revealing to us a Bond who has finally frozen the parts of himself necessary to do the dirty job of killing dispassionately. Director Marc Forster is something of a savant when it comes to directing the film's harrowing action scenes, using them as more than just spectacle, to actually give viewer's windows into the psychological and emotional state of the film's protagonist.

In Casino Royale, whenever Bond killed someone, we lingered with him, watching him lose a little more of his soul each time. In Quantum, he doesn't so much as blink when he shoots a man to death. This is Bond unhinged, and he doesn't want to talk about it. This movie probably has the least amount of dialogue than any other Bond film. But what little dialogue is present serves to reinforce the notion that Bond is closer than ever to losing his humanity. There's none of the traditional wooing of the primary female character, Bolivian agent Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), and you can see this especially in Bond's dynamic with his boss, M, once again played to perfection by the wonderful Dame Judi Dench. She spends a good amount of the movie wondering whether she should trust Bond, or if he's become a loose cannon going too far in his quest for vengeance. Early in Quantum, Bond insists to M that she doesn't need to worry about him, that he hasn't gone off the rails on a quest for vengeance, a statement to which M quickly snaps, "Well, it'd be a pretty cold bastard who didn't want revenge for the death of someone he loved." This single line quickly becomes the movie's thesis. As Bond races to uncover the organization pulling Vesper's strings, he becomes more and more unhinged. It's hinted at different points that Bond has ceased to sleep, and his drinking habits have amplified. Cornering Bond toward the end of the film, M returns to her original prognosis, telling him, "I think you're so blinded by inconsolable rage that you don't care who you hurt." As much as Bond might try to keep himself detached, he can't help himself. He is a man singularly defined by his pain, and that pain drives him.

Looking back at Casino Royale, I noted that the Bond character is inherently tragic. This dimension of his character is more fully fleshed out in Quantum. It's no coincidence that the final moments of this film unfold in wintry Russia, directly correlating with Bond's frozen emotional and psychological state. In Casino Royale, Bond learned his lesson the hard way. In the dirty business of taking lives, no one is to be trusted, and emotional vulnerability is just another way to get oneself killed. There's only one problem: Bond is human. The human element, the part of him ruled by emotions, demands some form of justice, some balm for the pain of betrayal and lost love. This film is about how Bond toes the line between making everything personal, and keeping things detached. In the desert, Bond taking his revenge against the organization is a moment of catharsis and release. So when Bond finally corners the man Vesper used to love in Russia, he has frozen himself. He has become detached. And when faced with the choice of killing the man for his hand in Vesper's death or sparing him, Bond elects to spare him, much to the approval of M. He comes to see things dispassionately. He sees the man as an asset, a means to an end. What the man knows becomes more important than how Bond feels about the whole affair. Though Bond has finally become the cold, ruthless man necessary to carry out death sentences without letting his emotions get in the way, he also becomes capable of detaching himself to the point of making the hard choice of knowing when to not pull the trigger.

It would be a mistake to label this as a victory. Yes, Bond learns that levelheadedness is a crucial component to life, that a man ruled by his emotions can easily lose sight of the bigger picture and let his ego into the equation. But his response to this realization is where he goes wrong. Rather than dealing with his emotions, he resorts to freezing himself in his pain. He closes himself off, crippling himself emotionally so that he will not form attachments like the one he formed with Vesper. He becomes detached, aloof. There will always be an air of mystery about him, a hint of danger, something that will entice many women to fall for him. The problem is, of course, that Bond isn't really a mystery. And the truth is that there isn't a mystery at all—only emptiness. He becomes a shell of a man, who indulges his many vices to keep himself on life support, to feel something. Bond wears a compelling mask. He appears strong in one sense, unflappable in the face of hardships that would cripple any weaker man. But in the sense of true masculinity, the opposite is true. Bond isn't unflappable at all. He's a man who, like most of us, has been crippled by trauma and refuses to deal with it. Perhaps the strongest decision Bond could have made would have been to leave his gun there in the snow alongside Vesper's necklace, to walk away from M and this life altogether. But instead he chooses to stay, because at this point the detachment the job requires is the only thing keeping him from dealing with his pain. The job becomes his life support.

Taken on its own merits, Quantum of Solace is a perfectly serviceable action-thriller. But when viewed as the conclusion of the emotional arc begun in Casino Royale, the film transcends its own shortcomings to become something greater than the sum of its parts. When taken together, both films imbue the Bond character with a depth not seen since Fleming's original novels. They offer a surprisingly thoughtful reflection on how men, especially, deal with emotional trauma. There is a long-standing sentiment that says James Bond is the symbol of what every man wishes he could be. But perhaps the more profound realization sees Bond as the symbol for the choices every man makes to numb himself to the pain that inevitably comes with living in a fallen world, choices that invariably bring about death to feeling. Perhaps Bond is a great moral teacher, warning against the temptation to jettison true masculinity in favor of stunting oneself emotionally in an effort to remain alive, refusing to see that love requires one to be vulnerable, open to the point that one stands the very real chance of being hurt. After all, if love is patient, and love is kind, neither jealous nor arrogant, nor seeking its own fulfillment, then the truth is that love allows the other the power of determination, and with that power comes the possibility of rejection. And even if that rejection comes, true love bears all things, endures all things. If these things are true, perhaps Bond is actually the symbol of what every man who chooses not to feel, who chooses not to love or let himself be loved, is in danger of becoming: a walking shell of a human being leaving nothing but destruction in his wake.

Hostiles (Review)

"We'll never get used to the Lord's rough ways, Joseph."

Hostiles (2017)

These powerful words, spoken by Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike), more or less act as the thesis for the brilliant Western film, Hostiles. Written and directed by film industry veteran Scott Cooper, Hostiles is a movie of unspeakable violence and deep, abiding grace. A movie that deals in no uncertain terms with man's anger as it is directed inward, outward, and, ultimately, toward the Almighty.

I have been described on more than one occasion as a terribly angry person. I suppose on some days, that's a fair and true assessment. I admit that I have never gotten used to the Lord's rough ways, the curious, sometimes devastating circumstances through which He deals with us. I spend quite a bit of time shaking my fist at Him. I'm guilty of asking, "Why him or her? Why not me?" I find myself often disappointed with the Divine, though I suppose that says more about my own expectations than anything else. I used to want to believe so badly in those cheap, pithy sayings like, "God will never let you down." Now I think that anyone who actually believes that has never once demanded something of Him that requires an act of true grace, has never taken a good long look inside his or her own dirty soul and asked that terribly painful question: "What have I done?"

Hostiles asks that question while wearing a stone face, without blinking or flinching, with a measure of brutal honesty. And it challenges us to do the same. The film opens as the Quaid homestead is attacked by a band of renegade Comanches, and Rosalee Quaid witnesses her entire family slaughtered in mere moments. She runs for her life, but before her final fate can be decided, we cut away to follow Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale). It's a jarring opening to a film full of devastating moments, and really does a good job of setting the tone for the story ahead—this isn't a movie for the faint of heart.

Blocker is a veteran of the Indian Wars, respected by his troops, and liked by his commanding officer. He also happens to be ruthless on the battlefield, and it's clear he's earned a reputation for this as well. When he is charged with transporting dying Cheyenne war chief, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), and his family back to their ancestral home in Montana, Blocker is reluctant. See, Blocker has a history with Yellow Hawk, who is responsible for the deaths of many of Blocker's close friends and comrades during the wars. Blocker is a hard, cruel man ruled by his anger. He initially refuses to carry out the deed, and only relents when threatened with losing his pension and with an impending court-martial. His emotions in turmoil, he stalks out into the desert and screams at the heavens in defiance. The Almighty thunders in ominous reply. As Blocker and his troops strike out with the Cheyenne family in tow, it's not long before they come across the Quaid homestead, and a traumatized, suicidal Rosalee.

Hostiles is a film that simmers with quiet intensity, punctuated by jarring moments of violence and fury. There's so much underlying tension between the characters that you're likely to find yourself wishing for something terrible to happen, if only to experience a moment of cathartic release. Blocker despises the situation he finds himself in. And Bale is an experienced enough actor that he rarely has to speak to communicate his emotional state. At every point, the rage he feels is etched onto his face. Yellow Hawk and his family are enigmas. They take the untoward and sometimes brutal treatment from Blocker's troops without complaint. You expect any one of them to snap at any moment, to make an attempt on Blocker's life. You never quite know what Rosalee is thinking. She's traumatized, that much is clear. But to what extent is the question. And the film follows these characters along their journey, the scenes playing out like a series of vignettes. There's never a moment's peace as the characters constantly look over their shoulders, wondering if death will come in the night, either by an arrow from a renegade war party, or by a knife's blade from within their own camp.

The story takes a hard turn with the introduction of Charles Wills (Ben Foster), an old accomplice of Blocker's who acts as his dark mirror. Wills has been charged with the brutal murder of a family, and Blocker is tasked with taking Wills along with the group to be delivered to the place where he will finally be hanged. Wills acts as a kind of dark side to Blocker's character. Though Blocker is a cruel man, set in his ways and embittered by the cards he's been dealt, what Hostiles understands is that no one is ever truly lost, not until that final choice has been made. Blocker has killed for his country, he has killed out of revenge, but he has never killed for the sake of killing; he's never killed and justified it as though it's all he knows how to do. Wills, on the other hand, snapped. He made his choice, and murdered a family. And, like a dark tempter, he lingers in the dark corners of the party's camp, speaking to Blocker in low whispers, suggesting that he and Blocker aren't so different after all.

I was grateful when Hostiles finally ended. Not because I disliked the film, but because I finally had relief. You spend the movie watching Blocker skirt the edges of his own humanity, consumed by rage that threatens to brim over at any given moment. It's Rosalee and her soft ways that help him begin to thaw. He watches her interact with Yellow Hawk and his family. He sees how she handles herself gracefully in the face of unfathomable pain. In mere minutes, life as she knew it ceased to exist. And, she has to claw and scratch her way out of the darkness to put herself back together. She, perhaps even more than Blocker, has every right to hate Yellow Hawk's people. After all, they took her family. But she doesn't. She smiles at them, genuine, warm smiles. She interacts with them, and laughs with Yellow Hawk's grandson, Little Bear. We spend a good amount of time watching Blocker watch Rosalee. She's stronger than he is or any of his men, who one-by-one begin to lose their selves on the long trail to Montana.

The final stretch of the film is simultaneously the most painful and the most rewarding. As Yellow Hawk's health fails, he nevertheless earns Blocker's trust, and they close in on Montana. He dies as they reach their destination, and Blocker stands watch over the native burial service performed by his family. Any lesser film would have ended here, would have sought to make some vague political statement about human rights and mutual forgiveness. Hostiles, blessedly, has more on its mind. As the burial services finish, dawn breaks, and they set to burying Yellow Hawk on his homeland. Then you see the riders coming in the distance, and whatever hope the film has given you up until this point is sucked away again.

The riders approach Blocker, Rosalee, and Yellow Hawk's family. They say they have staked their own claim to the land. Blocker protests that the land belongs to the Cheyenne. The riders say that no native claims will be honored by anyone, that it's time for the party to dig up the old war chief and move on. This is the moment of Blocker's choice. He can walk away, right now. Let the riders have their way with Yellow Hawk's family. He could draw his own weapon and gun the natives down himself. God knows he's wanted to since the film's opening moments. But there, at the old man's graveside, with Rosalee looking on, he makes his choice. He stands his ground. He will fight with the people he has, for years, hated.

Now, when Blocker draws his weapon, all that rage has been transformed. It's no longer something like hate, but is instead a kind of righteous anger. The battle is loud and furious, every gunshot thunders, and Blocker stalks the battlefield not as a bloodthirsty murderer, but as a dark, avenging angel. He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with a people he has for so long hated, a violent man purged of himself, cleansed inside, scoured by the strong hand of love for other rather than absorption with self, and won, in the end, by grace. The violence gives way to a devastating aftermath. Hardly anyone escapes this movie unscathed. It's a high price to be paid—too high, in many instances. But one man, the man that no one believed would or even could change his ways, emerges scarred and broken and profoundly wounded in the deepest parts of his being, but cleansed nonetheless. Saved from himself, purged of the darkness in his own soul.

Anger is something that permeates to the very core of our beings. By comparison, it's relatively easy to deny oneself vices. Sex you can live without. Drugs make you stupid. And alcohol tastes bad anyway. But anger? Rage? Hatred? Those things get inside of you and mess you up in ways heroin could only dream of. They latch on to certain memories or certain emotions and ride the wave all the way to the surface of the subconscious. And when you run to the booze or the drugs or whatever you use to drown the memory or the feeling again, they sink down into the depths and wait for the right trigger to bring them crashing back up. They lie in wait while you tell yourself you're making progress, while you date Jesus and go skipping down the long hallways of life, wearing a big fake grin and telling everyone you're doing just fine. But don't worry, they'll be back. Right when you least expect it, they cut your throat with a jagged edge. And you wake up one day wondering where it all came from, wondering whether or not you even made progress at all. Wondering why Jesus let it sit inside of you and rot you from the inside out. Wondering if Jesus is even there at all, or if it's all just one great lie. Not realizing that the only lie told in all those years of silent pain was the one you told yourself. The lie that said you never had a choice, that the only way to get through life was to keep plugging on, to never stop and think about yourself, to never once look inward and realize that down here on this lonely blue rock, there's no such thing as a high horse. That we're all wallowing in this mess together and the only One who has any capital on righteousness had to die to undo all the damage that's been done to you. To undo all the damage that you've done while you've been off dating Jesus and skipping down the hallways of life, wearing a fake grin and, as far as you can tell, doing just fine.

Many a night have I stalked out into my own personal deserts, screaming up at the heavens in utter defiance. Rarely does the Almighty thunder in ominous reply. But in my quieter moments, usually when the screaming's done, He does offer some solace and comfort, and I can finally sleep without being restless for a few nights, at least. The trouble with anger is that it turns you inward while directing you outward. You'll find reasons to despise people without ever figuring out what it is that's driving you to do that. It takes Rosalee and her dignity, her speaking plainly about things and telling him what he doesn't necessarily want to hear, to shake Blocker out of his self-induced state of rage. And it takes her quiet demeanor, her understanding ways, to comfort him as he finally takes a good long look at himself, as reality sets in and the illusion that Joe Blocker is a man who can't be reached begins to shatter. It takes Yellow Hawk making peace, not holding the past against him, to help him see that until he has forgiven himself of the real darkness inside of him, he does not understand forgiveness at all. We need people like Rosalee. We need people like Yellow Hawk. People who can show us the worst parts of ourselves while simultaneously being bigger than all our pain. I think we tend to call those people friends.

We need them because behind them, usually working through them, is One who stood on the battlefield and made His choice. One who chose to stand with a people He had every right to despise because of their sin, One who struck out against the dark tempter of this world in righteous anger. One who pursues the people He chose to represent with a furious love that damns their hatred for Him and for each other. And though He never guarantees that we'll get out of this world without scars, without broken bones and deep, profound wounds, we emerge from our encounters with Him cleansed to the deepest parts of our being. Saved from ourselves, having had the darkness purged from our souls.

Toward a Theology of Beauty and Aesthetics

Sunset in Rachel, NV

My introduction to the philosophical notion of beauty probably came—as I suspect it has for a number of others—from Romantic poet John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The poem’s final line reads: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”¹ Being some kind of subspecies of Platonist, I tend to think that Keats is, to one degree or another, correct in his assessment. To what degree, however, I am unsure. I find the either/or of questions like “is beauty subjective or objective” difficult to muddle through, and tend to swing in either direction depending on my mood of the day. I really go out of my way to avoid being wishy-washy, and I tend to live my life in black-and-white, either/or terms. But when it comes to my thinking, the lines seem to blur a bit. Those words could very well be the most narcissistic thing I have ever written. But, in the words of the late Brennan Manning, I find that I am often a “bundle of paradoxes” when it comes to these sorts of philosophical quandaries. I suppose there is something to say for being honest and self-aware.

Of one thing concerning beauty, I am sure: beauty has saved me more than once. I never had the luxury of a dramatic conversion experience. I came to Christ having been rescued in a thousand small and unsexy ways, saved more from myself than from some exterior thing—saved by things that captured my imagination rather than my head or my heart, to use a clichéd dichotomy. Saved by stories, by characters like James Bond, Batman, Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and Darth Vader; or, more precisely, saved through them. They were not the architects of my faith, to be sure. But they were certainly part of the foundation. It took me some years to realize that the parts of me those characters captured were parts that the Holy Spirit tends to capture in each and every human being on the long and winding road toward salvation, that these things were intrinsically linked to notions of beauty and aesthetics because they appealed to the imagination. Because of these things, the question I would primarily like to deal with here concerns the relevance of beauty to the human understanding of the nature of God. My thesis is simple: a comprehension of beauty is the means by which the Holy Spirit woos us to Christ and conforms us to his image.

Beauty: A Definition

Returning to Keats’s poem provides an interesting, if somewhat unorthodox, starting point. The notion of beauty as truth is a bit abstract, however, and requires some fleshing out. Enter the Platonic notion of beauty as the “splendor of the truth.” While this helps to add some color to a working definition, it is C. S. Lewis who puts the finer point on things. If the Platonic notion of beauty as the splendor of truth is to be accepted, and it does seem to be presupposed in Lewisian thought, then beauty, being “splendor,” is that which provokes a sense of longing for the truth. To be a bit more precise, beauty is what appeals to eros.

Eros

Modern Christian thought is frequently dominated by hardline dichotomies, sometimes appropriate, at other times belabored and unnecessary. The juxtaposition of eros against agape, I believe, falls into the latter category. The predominant notion of eros as a vile, egocentric kind of lustful love with sexual overtones can be traced back primarily to the Swedish Lutheran theologian Anders Nygren and his seminal treatise Agape and Eros. In this work, Nygren argues that eros, an egocentric type of love, is the born rival of agape, which is a love that is completely other-focused and, therefore, the godlier of the two.² And this seems to be the dominant reading of eros in Christian circles today.

Lewis, interestingly, wastes little time banishing this reductionist thought. Eros is not something to be shuttered out, according to Lewis. On the contrary, eros is a necessary element of the human being precisely because of this notion of beauty. Nygren’s error in thought, Lewis would argue, is in conflating sexual infatuations and lust with eros. Lewis, relying on the Platonic definition of beauty as the splendor of the truth, refutes this idea by pointing out that eros can have a sexual aspect, though the sexual aspect is not necessary for one’s eros to be engaged.³ Eros has more to do with desires—what we millennials call "passions"—and the objects of one's desires, than it does with the raw heat of sexuality (which Lewis bifurcates from eros by denoting as Venus). More to do with the deepest, abiding loves and affections of one's own life, the objects out of which one draws self-fulfillment in the experience of loving, than the mere whims of one's infatuations.

Eros Stimulated

I agree wholeheartedly with Lewis on this point. Having read Nygren’s work, I can understand the juxtaposition he makes, but his argument is just nowhere near as nuanced as it should be. The fact of the matter is, if every human being appealed only and always to agape love, the world would likely devolve into a mass of Batmen. That is, people who constantly give of themselves to their own detriment, people who eventually come to be singularly defined by their pain, and cope with it only by spending themselves into oblivion, without a shred of the ruthless kind of self-reflection necessary to keep on the straight and narrow. The truth is that even agape can become twisted, if not appropriately balanced with a healthy amount of erotic (used in the Lewisian sense of the word, not to denote sexual tension) stimulation.

To put it another way, there have been times when reading a certain book, or watching a certain movie, I have walked away feeling enraptured. The sensation is a bit like having a crush, though clearly less physical, but certainly along the same lines of having my emotional interest engaged. The point Lewis rightly makes is that the reason the emotions are stimulated similarly in both instances, is because it is the same aspect of the human being that is being stimulated; in other words, in both situations, one's eros is being provoked. To illustrate: there are times when I read Scripture that I walk away captivated by the story told and the characters inside those stories—eros stimulated. There is a reason the hideous language of “dating Jesus” has become too often used in the church today, and certain worship songs might as well be aped from high school love letters written to one’s romantic interest. While I despair at the shallowness, there is a kind of point being grasped at in both instances, a desire for one’s deepest longings to be fulfilled, for an ultimate object of affection, for one's eros to be stimulated.

The late David Foster Wallace, in his seminal address to Kenyon College students entitled "This Is Water," illustrated beautifully what is at stake when we ignore eros. "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life," says Wallace, "there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." Be it money. Be it power. Be it sex. These things, Wallace suggests, will eat you alive. In other words, your affections run back at you. You are what you eat. You become what you love. You reflect what you worship. The object of your affections is the key here, unless you've cracked the secret and can make all desires up and disappear (unlikely, I'll wager). The benefit of the religious experience, then, is in framing the object of one's desires as a being that is wholly other than oneself and one's petty wants. It directs one to look "out there" for the fulfillment of longing, rather than "in here," a truly radical notion that upends all the sentimental fortune cookie wisdom that's been handed out to me by well-meaning teachers and family members who've told me to "dream big" and "look inside and follow your heart." And the only religion that puts capital on this like no other is Christianity because of this insane notion that lies at the heart of the Christian faith—that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, with whom Christians, through faith, are united in His death and resurrection, so that we rest our hope on the promise that we, too, will be raised up from death at the end of all things.

This, according to Lewis, is the function of beauty—to provoke one’s desires and longings toward Truth himself. And this is a necessary component of the salvation experience. Knowledge alone does not bring one to salvation; there must be some element of conviction out of which is born the true confession of faith for a Christian, that “Jesus is Lord” and that God raised him from the dead (Rom. 10:9-10). Simply stating that Christ is Lord is not enough; the story must be believed, a story that is simultaneously cosmic in scope and astoundingly intimate, that tells us we humans are broken and in need of a Savior, and that Savior has come in the form of Jesus Christ. This confession then is less a cerebral rehearsing of facts; it is actually the cry of one’s deepest longings to have one's desires rightly reoriented toward the One who defines what is beautiful and good (as God does during the creation in the earliest chapters of Genesis).

Beauty in the Salvation Experience

If, then, the confession of Christ as Lord is born from the desire to have one’s longings rightly reoriented, the question becomes: what prompts one to have the desire in the first place? Any theologian worth his or her salt will point out the disturbing reality of Romans 3:23, that all humans have sinned and continually fall short of God’s glory, and, as a result, according to Ephesians 4, all whose hearts are unrepentant (i.e., do not long to have their desires rightly reoriented) continue on with darkened minds. Being the good Calvinistic dispensational presuppositionalist that I am (bundle of paradoxes, remember?), I tend to take quite literally the notion that faith is itself a gift from God (Eph. 2:8), a result of God’s act of predestination toward all those whom he has chosen to receive it (Rom. 8-9).

Therefore, I believe that the Holy Spirit must first illuminate the darkened mind of an unrepentant sinner before that sinner may come to faith. How? Through the stimulation of eros—through beauty. The choice of words in Scripture is interesting when describing the notion of how the elect come to Christ. In John 6:44, Jesus himself describes the process as a kind of “drawing,” not a forcing of the will. But a wooing, of sorts; a (for lack of better wording) courtship, or romancing of the spirit.

I had a crush on Dana Scully before I ever took to liking Jesus as a real person. But Scully, a fictional character in Chris Carter’s groundbreaking television series, The X-Files, is a skeptic who still manages to hold onto her faith. Darth Vader was the most feared man in that galaxy far, far away. But even that dark tyrant was not too far gone, and had the capacity to recognize his mistakes, though it cost him his life, a literal dying of the self in order to do the right thing. Scully’s faith, Vader’s sacrifice, the list goes on. All of the facets of these characters who captured my imagination I would come to find colored in brighter, more perfect hues in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. My fascinations and imaginings even as far back as my childhood—unbeknownst to me at the time, but oh so clear in hindsight—were the ways in which I was being drawn, the ways in which my spirit was being romanced, my eros stimulated, my longings provoked toward Truth himself.

As I have grown older and talked with more Christians, I have learned that the dramatic encounter with Christ that I myself had long hoped for and even envied in others is not the normative salvation experience. It turns out that every Christian I have ever met, every last one of them, has undergone some kind of experience like the one described above. Sure, some people have those legendary conversion stories, with all the bells and whistles and pyrotechnics. But behind all that dramatic flair is something more primal, something quieter and more even-keeled, common to all who have encountered that strange and wonderful man who can make death itself begin to work backwards. They were never pressured into a proclamation of faith, but drawn to Christ through their longings, through a coming to terms with the fact that their desires were misaligned, and needed to be recalibrated. I found myself profoundly changed—and very much relieved of many disappointments with the divine—when I finally came to understand Psalm 37:4, in which the LORD is said to give those who delight in him the desires of their heart, to mean not that he grants one’s petty wants (I'm still waiting on a million bucks to fall out of the sky and land on my doorstep), but that desire itself would run in a different direction, and that the literal, ultimate object of one’s desire would be reoriented. And the great truth of Christianity is that one's desire must run toward a person, which is a profoundly human notion in and of itself. The alien thing about it comes when we realize that the person we're running after might look like us, walk like us, and talk like us, but He ain't from around these parts at all.

It is a telling thing, then, that there is a particular quote from Augustine that has haunted me since I first read it, that I return to year after year, sometimes for comfort, sometimes for the kick in the teeth. A quote that is at once devastating and profound, that reminds me it's possible to laugh, cry, dance, and sigh, and, if you're not careful, still miss the strong hand of love hidden just beyond the grey rain curtain of this world. A quote that never made much sense to me until I came to understand beauty as the thing that appeals to eros, the thing employed by the Holy Spirit to draw me, as Lewis would say, further up, and further in: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.”⁴

Casino Royale (Retrospective)

Casino Royale (2006)

History will likely remember the mid-2000's as the beginning of the age of reboots, cinematically speaking. 2005 saw Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins reinvent the Batman character for the modern age of moviemaking, the prototypical reboot film. Just over one year later, a more radical reinterpretation of another iconic character would set cinema screens across the world ablaze. I can vaguely recall the backlash over Daniel Craig's casting as Ian Fleming's well-known British spy, James Bond. Everything from his rugged looks to his hair color seemed to be the subject of immense criticism—he just didn't seem the Bond "type." I can't help but wonder if the highly publicized response to his casting actually fueled the man's performance. From the moment Craig's face emerged from the shadows in the film's noir-tinged opening sequence, the naysayers were effectively silenced.

Rarely has the phrase "back to his roots" been more effectively applied than in reference to this big screen adaptation of Fleming's original 1953 novel. It's a fair criticism to suggest that by the time Pierce Brosnan's run as Bond ended with 2002's Die Another Day, the character had become more of a caricature of himself than an actual human being, an ineffable, seemingly immortal action hero on increasingly outlandish escapades. Casino Royale was the much-needed shot in the arm the film series needed. In Daniel Craig, James Bond was not so much reinvented as he was rediscovered, stripped down to his bare essentials, returned to the fires in which he was originally forged. I suspect that, with time, literary and film studies will come to look at Casino Royale as a benchmark for how to adapt older works of literature for modern audiences. In the transition to screen, the novel's basic plot, structure, and major characters are left intact, but the whole thing has been overhauled to fit into a post-9/11 world. Bond himself undergoes the most comprehensive redesign from previous films, being written as something like the character's original incarnation under Fleming's penmanship. Daniel Craig's Bond is more akin to Fleming's than any other, save for perhaps Timothy Dalton's take on the character. In discussions such as these, it is easy to overlook the film's writers in favor of lauding the actors who bring the characters to life. The tremendous contribution of writing trio Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis should not be diminished, however, nor should the work of veteran director Martin Campbell in returning Bond to something closer to his original form.

Viewing the film once again in preparation of this particular piece, I was struck by just how cinematically epic the film came across. Bond films have always been sensational events, but this particular film has a certain breadth of scope and assuredness of pacing rarely found in modern films. Martin Campbell is an old warhorse when it comes to the film industry, but he is hardly a household name. It's a bit of a shame, actually, because his approach to Casino Royale gives the film a kind of timeless quality not seen since the old film noirs of classic Hollywood. The movie is no less thrilling now, even after the dozen or so times I've watched it over the years. This is a particularly hard trick to pull off, but Campbell does it flawlessly. I can only think of a handful of films I can rewatch without getting bored, and most of them are in black-and-white. Bond, in both his original literary incarnation and onscreen, has always flirted with themes common to film noir. He's certainly a hardboiled protagonist by way of British storytelling. And, at least in the books, there is hardly an ending in which Bond escapes unscathed. Over the years, these noir-ish elements were toned down in the films in favor of a more exotic, adventuresome feel. Part of what Casino Royale does so well is to rediscover the noir component of Bond's world. Look no further than the film's first five minutes, shot entirely in black-and-white, with heavy shadows and crackling, broken dialogue, if there is any question about this.

I remember thinking, at one point, that this is a film that sizzles. That's the best way I know how to describe it. From opening to closing moments, this film is so shot through with a kind of fiery intensity that one cannot help but become mesmerized by the layers of intrigue. Bond's world is one laced with paranoia, in which a hint of danger can be detected in even the most mundane things. Everything from the extreme close-ups on the faces of the characters, to the wide panoramic establishing shots of the film's numerous settings serves to deepen this sense of deadly exoticism. I've been to Nassau. I love Nassau. But I've never been to Bond's Nassau, a place that is at once bright, warm, and sensual while at the same time being dark, cold, and scandalous.

Casino Royale takes its time without ever meandering, carefully establishing each character. Dame Judi Dench is the only returning cast member from the old era, playing Bond's superior, M. Despite her small stature and soft voice, she cuts a strong, imposing figure who plays more like Bond's mother than she does his boss. The villainous Le Chiffre, played to brilliant perfection by the inimitable Mads Mikkelsen, chews up every scene he's in, and when he finally sits down at the card table with Bond, it seems less like we're watching two men play a high-stakes poker game than it does two clashing titans finally meeting in a cosmic conflict. Le Chiffre is a kind of villain you don't see much in movies anymore. Cold, calculating, afraid to get his hands dirty unless it's absolutely necessary. It's a sexy thing nowadays to make antagonists sympathetic, to give them a "perspective" that the film portrays as being equally valid, or even more valid, than that of the protagonist. Not so with Le Chiffre. This is an evil man, plain and simple. He's out to make money, and whosoever comes between him and his wealth be damned. He's not going to fight the protagonist, he's going to run. He'll plot, he'll scheme, and he'll wait until the perfect moment before he strikes, not only preying on his victims physically, but psychologically and emotionally as well. In many ways, he is Bond's antithesis. Whereas Bond flirts with losing his humanity at every waking moment, Le Chiffre willfully gives into the darkness. Bond is stalwart and a bit reckless, Le Chiffre is cowardly and methodical. The film wisely mines most of its suspense from the mind-games played between these two characters, more so than any sort of raw displays of physicality.

James Bond has always been a bit of a head case, an orphan honed into a lethal assassin who indulges in life's vices as a means of clinging to what little humanity he has left because he is in the most dehumanizing profession of all—taking lives. But at the core of his character is a specific flaw that is all too common: an inability to form emotional attachments. There is a very immature streak to him only hinted at throughout his numerous incarnations, but remains present in every iteration. Somewhere inside the man is a little boy, frozen and numbed by years of emotional scars and by what Fleming, in the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service, called "dirty, dangerous memories." While Bond the man goes racing along, Bond the boy races to keep up. And this lack of maturity on Bond's part often leads him into emotional entanglements that always end in more damage being piled onto an already fractured psyche. Casino Royale understands this about Bond's character, and this flaw is mined for all its worth through the introduction of Vesper Lynd. Eva Green gives a masterclass performance as Vesper, a soul who is just as tortured as Bond. While Bond's backstory is never outright stated, she peels away the layers of his meticulously-crafted emotional body armor over an astonishing dinner conversation in their very first meeting. Ever the cipher, Vesper matches him tit-for-tat, and seems to be mature in all the ways Bond isn't. Perplexed, Bond quickly falls hard for the woman, but without the emotional maturity to recognize the darkness that is already present in her, and continues to grow with every waking moment they spend together. Perhaps one valid reading of the film sees Casino Royale as a peculiar kind of love story between two haunted, tragic figures, a story destined to end in disaster.

I have said before that I sometimes read Scripture as a tragedy. While the overarching theme of Scripture's epic narrative is certainly one of hope, there are many tragic characters woven throughout the vast tapestry. Take Judas Iscariot, for example. Or John the Baptist, whose life was dramatically cut short by Herod. To go even further back, consider Jeremiah, the prophet known for lamenting his circumstances. Or Absalom. Even David, in some ways. Of course, there is Moses and his contention with the children of Israel. And do I even need to mention Cain? Or Adam? Or Eve? All this goes without pointing out that there is an obvious tragic element to Jesus Christ himself, the God-man who became flesh, born with a singular grim purpose, identified in Isaiah 53 to be a "man of sorrows." I'm not suggesting that James Bond or Casino Royale should even be considered anything remotely close to Scripture; however, the point here is to demonstrate that tragic figures are not merely villainous individuals and that tragic figures can, at times, have more to teach us about things of eternal significance than the regular happy-clappy stories we so often hear presented to us in airbrushed fashion for twenty minutes on a Sunday morning. You cannot fully appreciate the tragedy of Christ's crucifixion without seeing the toll that Judas's terrible choice takes on his being, ultimately driving him to suicide. You cannot appreciate the full weight of Christ's redemptive work on the cross and in his resurrection without first understanding the absolute devastation wrought upon the world by Adam and Eve and their dark tempter. And you cannot appreciate the character of James Bond—literarily or otherwise—until you understand the tragic dimensions of his character, as a man who will always and forever keep hurting himself and the people around him because he never, as he admits in the 2015 film Spectre, stops to think about it.

There is a real lesson to be learned in examining the Bond character, especially for men. It has to do with the tendency to not reflect on their choices and life decisions. It has to do with learning to be emotionally vulnerable and emotionally intelligent. It has to do with learning the dimensions of their own souls to pinpoint those areas that have calloused because of years of damage and scarring, the parts of ourselves we are unwilling to face because they mean we must allow ourselves to risk being hurt by someone else. And it has to do, ultimately, with how we choose to take those parts of ourselves to the foot of the cross, so that they are redeemed, becoming part of the new man.

It amazes me how intuition works, how even at a very young age I could find shades of myself in Bond's character. My own emotional detachments began at a point earlier than I can remember, accentuated by familial dysfunction, as I suspect it has for many, many others as well. And I continually find that the hardest thing I do is willingly choose to let Christ scour me inside and out, each and every day, with the most ruthless brush of all. To bring to the forefront of my thoughts all the little defense mechanisms that keep me numb to reality, withdrawn, and reticent to let Christ work in my own life. I always emerge from the scouring a little better off than I was before, finding that the air I breathe is just a little cleaner, my sight just a little clearer. And it's this daily routine, this daily dying to oneself, of politely telling myself, "No," when I begin to feel myself receding, that is simultaneously the hardest and most necessary thing I do. I suppose this is what Christ meant when he admonished his followers to carry their own crosses.

I have very few deep and abiding affections. A few of them are for certain people. A few of them are for certain foods. And fewer still are for certain characters. Mulder and Scully have taught me much about eros, and love, and how to navigate my faith in my weaker moments when I'm ready to throw it all away. But James Bond, that dark, haunted, tragic figure, has captivated me the longest. Teaching me more than any other about the devastated landscape of my own soul.

But there is one still who lurks in the deepest recesses of my imagination, larger and more ancient than Bond. One who has always been there, though it took me years to recognize his presence. The one who has blessed me and kept me, and who, through these characters, has shone his face upon me and administered much grace, ever pulling me further up, and further in to his own story. The story in which my own personal tragedies are given texture and accounted for, where my own terrible choices are brought into startling, painful clarity. The same story where tragedy gives way to hope, and hope ultimately gives meaning to the tragedy.

Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family (Review)

Scott Snyder's Court of Owls storyline dealt with themes commonly found in Greek mythology, from the Court's labyrinth to Bruce Wayne's long-lost sibling. Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family shifts gears, taking the Batman mythos into territory that is positively medieval. This book is not Snyder's first foray into writing the Joker, as he penned a take on the character in an earlier Batman story, The Black Mirror. But the character's appearance in that story was tantamount to a memorable cameo. With this volume, Snyder finally gets to dig his fingers into the character's guts, and the yarn he spins here surpasses the previous two volumes (excellent in their own right) in terms of sheer storytelling prowess and mythological power.

Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family

The Joker is a character that, at first glance, should never have worked. A thin, demented clown should in no way, shape, or form become the biggest threat to a grim and hulking protagonist like the Batman. Yet the character has become Batman's greatest antagonist, growing into a comic book icon in his own right. And this has nothing to do with the physical threat he poses to Batman; in truth, Batman can (and often does) manhandle him. Instead, Joker poses the greatest threat to the caped crusader when he attacks Batman psychologically and emotionally. Snyder understands this, and writes the Joker accordingly. The effect is darkly sublime, causing Death of the Family to read less like a superhero story, and more like a spine-chilling psychological thriller.

But Snyder's brilliance is not merely in his well-written characters; rather, what makes his work on Batman a modern classic is the way he imbues his stories with mythological symbolism, which has quickly become his trademark. While the Court of Owls storyline evokes the themes of classical Greek myths, Death of the Family taps the vein of medieval archetypes.

The story kicks off with a zinger that could have been lifted from a horror film. Joker, having previously had the skin of his face filleted off, has been absent from Gotham City for a year. Reborn, in a sense, he heralds his return in monstrous fashion by stalking into the GCPD where the face is being kept as evidence. He retrieves the face, leaving a body of dead police officers in his wake. Batman arrives on the scene, and the plot unfurls as Joker's horrors compound and Batman races to stop him. The key lies in Joker's twisted machinations, which sees him reenacting a number of his former crimes. With his allies quickly becoming victims, Batman follows the trail of destruction to a reservoir, the site of his first encounter with the Joker. Of course, Joker is waiting for him, the decayed flesh of his old face strapped onto his skull, giving him a hideous and truly frightening visage.

Here at the reservoir, Joker makes his intentions more pronounced. He has returned, he explains, to bring Batman back to form. He reasons that Batman's reliance on his numerous allies, known as the Batman Family (Nightwing, Batgirl, etc.), have made Batman soft. And Joker sees it as his job, as the "court jester," to make Batman, the "king," strong again. "And that's all I've ever tried to do for you," he says. "Bring you the worst news of your own heart so you might survive it, laugh at it, even, and become strong." To do this, Joker explains that every member of the Batman Family must die. And that shouldn't be a problem, because Joker claims to have acquired each Family member's true identity, which he has written down in a small notebook that he keeps on his person.

This initial encounter at the reservoir lays the groundwork for the themes Snyder's story will ultimately deal with. The imagery of Batman as a kind of mythological king is recapitulated time and again throughout the book. Interestingly, the voice of this particular mythology is the story's villain. The Joker sees himself as the only one who truly "gets" Batman as this mythological figure—a king, of sorts. And this fixation underlies his motivations to wipe out the Family. Batman's allies make him weak, Joker believes, precisely because they humanize him. But to Joker, Batman isn't human. He is representative of something more primal—a myth. And Joker's goal here is to wipe out Batman's allies so that the cat-and-mouse game he plays with Batman can go on into a harrowing eternity. Batman as the mythological king, and Joker as his court jester who spices up the king's dull, mundane existence.

The middle act of the story takes place in Arkham Asylum, the legendary psychiatric hospital where Batman's rogues' gallery are often taken after he has captured them. This old gothic structure plays as the king's castle, the perverted Camelot to Batman's dark Arthur. As Batman stalks the hallways, which look more like dungeons and crypts with every panel, he encounters numerous villains from his past, dispatching them with a ruthless efficiency on his trek toward Joker. There are several powerful moments here that arrested my attention. The first is a surreal one. As Batman navigates one particular hallway, he is nearly struck by a burning horse that Joker had turned loose in the Asylum and set afire. The image of the flaming horse racing down the dark hallway is not easily forgotten. The second finds Batman flanked by a number of Arkham inmates that Joker has freed and dressed in a kind of pseudo-medieval armor using police gear. Equipped with riot shields and flaming batons in place of swords, Joker refers to them as "Galahads and Gawains," an obvious reference to the characters of Arthurian legend. One of them even rides a horse. After dispatching them, Batman mounts the horse and travels deeper into Arkham, encountering a series of live bodies suspended from the ceiling, all stitched together to create a stomach-turning "royal tapestry" upon which Joker has painted scenes from his and Batman's previous encounters. Batman passes the human tapestry to the hellish chanting of "Hail the bat king!"

When Batman finally encounters his nemesis, Joker plays the ace up his sleeve. He reveals that he has captured the Batman Family, and the only way to save them is for Batman, as the mythological king, to take his place on the "throne," which turns out to be an electric chair. Of course, to save the Family, Batman does, and is shocked into unconsciousness.

The scenes taking place in Arkham are the most memorable of the entire volume because of their powerful symbolism and imagery. Capullo's art really shines here, painting one gruesome scene after another that plays like a descent into madness the deeper Batman ventures into the asylum. Snyder's use of the villain to develop the mythological conceits of his story is a tactic already seen in his previous two volumes, but it is even more effective here because of the subtle shift in genre and tone. Most any good Batman story is fueled by elements of the noir and thriller genres, but in Death of the Family, Snyder takes these elements to the extreme while throwing in a dose of horror for good measure. It's a chillingly effective concoction, and the dialogue boxes that give the reader insight into Bruce Wayne's internal thoughts are the real gems of the issue, demonstrating the psychological toll Joker takes on even the stalwart protagonist. A vision of Batman may haunt every criminal who prowls the streets of Gotham City, but it is the disturbing image of the Joker who haunts the Batman.

When Batman awakens, he finds himself lashed to the same chair in a familiar system of caves—the caves leading back to Wayne Manor and Batman's base of operation. In the caves, Joker has prepared a nightmarish dinner party. The Family is also present, bound to their own chairs. Joker explains that the cave has been doused in gasoline, and whenever Batman grows tired of the Family's company, all he has to do is escape from his chair. This will ignite the gasoline, burning his allies to death. When Joker threatens to set fire to the Family himself, Batman escapes, trigging the ignition. But, ever the thinker, Batman blows the ceiling of the cave, allowing a torrent of water to wash in and quench the flames before the Family can be harmed. Joker attempts to escape, but Batman pursues him to a dangerous precipice in the cave system. At the edge of the sheer drop, Batman claims that, during Joker's absence, he had managed to deduce the history and the true identity of the man who had become the Joker. As Batman threatens to whisper the man's name, Joker unexpectedly hurls himself over the edge, falling into the black nothingness below. Batman recovers the little notebook that Joker claimed contained the identities of all the Family members, but its pages are blank.

There are at least two other themes of note here that make Snyder's take on the Batman-Joker relationship worth exploring. The first is the notion of family. A major plot point of Death of the Family has to do with how the Joker managed to locate the caves beneath Wayne Manor in the first place. After his initial encounter with Joker at the reservoir, where Joker claims to have uncovered the Family's identities, Batman confesses to his allies that there was a point in time, years earlier, in which he suspected Joker could have traced him back into the cave system. Bruce had kept this piece of information from the Family, and justified his decision to do so as an attempt to protect them. He assures them that he worked and reworked every possible scenario, and is confident that Joker never made it far enough to learn their secrets. Still, his allies confront him for never telling them of even the potentiality that their identities had been compromised. This theme of familial secrets is nothing new; Snyder already treaded these waters in the earlier Court of Owls arc. In that story, the emphasis was on the value of keeping certain painful truths from those whom the truth might hurt; however, in Death of the Family, this theme is explored from the opposite side. By the story's end, the Family remains upset with Bruce for having kept this from them. In keeping the secret, Bruce was less concerned with protecting his family than he was simply not trusting them to handle the truth well.

This is a small but significant detail that resonates with anyone who has had to deal with a particularly difficult kind of family member. Bruce rationalizes away his inherent mistrust of the people closest to him by saying that he kept the secret to protect them. The truth, though, is that this was a critical choice that allowed him to retreat within himself, a seemingly simple choice to remain silent, which turns out to have dire consequences in the long run. Despite the Joker's brutal assault on the Family, at the end of the day, it's not the Joker's attack that cuts Bruce's allies the deepest. Instead, it's their patriarch's lack of trust in them that wounds them profoundly, and drives a wedge between them and him. Joker's accusation that the family makes Batman weak by humanizing him actually has a bit of truth to it. Specifically, the family humanizes Batman precisely because—as all families or close-knit friends tend to do—the members bring out the flaws in the hero's very human alter-ego, Bruce Wayne. The people with whom we are close are always the first to feel hurt by our actions, and the people who know us best are the ones who can pinpoint our deepest insecurities and character flaws. Wayne's reliance on his allies, even when he wears the cape and cowl, reflects a very human component to the character of Batman. They keep him from stumbling over the brink, from being swallowed up by the darkness that is inherent in bearing the mantle of the dark knight. During his final confrontation with Joker in the caves, Batman states that it is actually his trust in his family that makes him strong. In other words, it is his trust in others, in someone other than himself, that keeps him grounded and ultimately saves him from his own darkness.

The other theme of note is an interesting one, and concerns the relationship between Batman and Joker. A codependent relationship is a sometimes-controversial psychological concept in which one individual's thinking revolves almost entirely around the other individual in the relationship. It is a kind of addiction that frequently rears its ugly head in dysfunctional families, unhealthy friendships, and romantic entanglements. This is a particularly sinister kind of addiction that masquerades as being other-focused, but is actually a deep-set caliber of narcissism in which the codependent says to the other individual, "You are what I say you are, because that is precisely what I need you to be." I've seen this strong, manipulative kind of relationship play out with friends, within my own family, and have even been guilty of it myself. It is the antithesis of genuinely caring for another human being, of giving that person the freedom to fail or to be better on their own terms. It's a closed-fisted way of dealing with others, fueled by an inward bend of the spirit that operates under the pretense of being concerned with and sacrificial for the sake of the other. And this is the very same type of relationship the Joker espouses in regards to Batman.

There are bound to be some critics who want to focus on the strange eroticism that is laced throughout the Joker's portrayal in this story. Indeed, the Joker's scenes with Batman are tinged ever so slightly with a loose sexual tension. To be sure, I do not believe this is a political statement on Scott Snyder's part. The point of portraying the Joker in this way is not to make readers scrutinize these scenes in an attempt to ascertain whether or not these characters are homosexuals. Rather, what Snyder seems to understand and to write extremely well is that codependent relationships always come entwined with a kind of erotic energy. I use erotic here not to denote explicit sexual tension, but in a more Lewisian sense, to denote eros, the extremely desirous parts of the human being that is ignored only to one's detriment. In short, what Snyder understands is that true eros, as Lewis advocates it, is actually a good and healthy desire to know and to be known by another, be it in a romantic relationship, or merely a good friendship. But what the Joker exhibits is eros gone horribly, horribly awry.

Upon their initial meeting at the reservoir, Joker greets Batman with a bizarre "Hello, darling." During their battle in the caves, he rages against Batman's trust in the Family, screaming, "They're not your real family! We are! I am!" And right before throwing himself into the abyss, Joker says, "This isn't what you want! You know it, I know it, and now they know it, too! In the end, the real end, the only ones left will be you and me." For Joker, his relationship with Batman is symbiotic. One cannot exist without the other, because Joker, in his own mind, completes Batman. He believes that he makes Batman stronger by continually pushing the dark knight to the brink of his humanity over and over again. Perhaps the most telling thing, though, is how Joker reacts when Batman threatens to whisper his true name. By throwing himself into the abyss, Joker effectively says that he would literally rather die than face reality.

This same warped psychology is found all throughout the narrative. When he accuses Batman of having grown dull because of the Family, this results from his refusal to see Batman as a human being. In Joker's mind, Batman is a myth. In his delusion in the caves, he says the reason he removed his own face was to show Batman that "Beneath my grin, though, is just more grin! Ha ha! And beneath that face of yours is something snouted and fanged and lovely and that's what this is about. Reminding you of the bond we share, you and I!" Only with him, Joker insists, does Batman truly become transcendent. In Joker's mind, Bruce Wayne doesn't even exist. There is only the Batman. And when Batman turns the tables on him, by claiming to know Joker's history and true identity, he essentially threatens to crack Joker's delusion. In giving the Joker's name, Batman would shatter the illusion that they are both these mythological figures caught up in some cosmic hunt. It would prove that Joker is just as vulnerable as Batman, that both of them are actually mere mortals who are in need of serious, serious help.

The story ends as Bruce Wayne converses with his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. He explains to Alfred that, years earlier, just after he realized the Joker could have slipped into the caves, he had traveled to Arkham Asylum, where the Joker was an inmate, and visited him. Only he had gone not as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne. The Joker, it turns out, did not acknowledge him. In that moment, Wayne says he knew that the Joker did not care about Batman's identity beneath the cowl. Joker, he realized, was ultimately a narcissist who had become transfixed on the idea of Batman, thus removing him from all reality. To him, it was all one big fantasy. The Joker didn't have categories for facing Bruce Wayne instead of Batman. "It would," Bruce says to Alfred, "ruin his fun."

This dark, moody, and absorbing thriller is a brilliant character study. Snyder's take on the Joker is unique and completely unnerving, elevating the character from homicidal maniac to true monster. Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion craft some truly stunning art, effectively capturing the tone and mood of the story. With Death of the Family, Scott Snyder has written another instant classic.