Month: July 2006

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Doubt

Now playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts." I love that line. I think it has a great deal of truth to it, but it is incomplete. Someone overwhelmed by doubt cannot act, and sometimes circumstances demand action, even if the best path is not apparent.

John Patrick Shanley's play Doubt grapples with that: the morality of acting decisively in a painfully uncertain world. It's a beautifully crafted work, perfect in its ambiguity; when the actors come to take their bows, we still don't know for sure whether the characters acted rightly. We don't know what the truth is. We, too, have doubts.

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Superman Returns

In theaters.

I’m no expert, but I can’t think of anyone in the comics pantheon who is more of a Christ figure than Superman, sent to Earth by his wise, noble father to save humanity. Superman Returns certainly doesn’t shy away from religious allusions. Two characters explicitly describe the Kryptonian knight as a savior and argue over whether the world needs such a champion. The confrontation between Superman and Lex Luthor — wielding a dagger of kryptonite, thus rendering the hero powerless — reads like the road to Golgotha: Earth’s savior is viciously beaten and taunted and left to die on a desolate landscape, the sky cracked by lightening. And at the film’s climax, Superman falls to earth with his arms spread wide like a man on a cross, though we know, of course, that he will rise again. Superman Returns is an action movie by way of The Passion of the Christ with a splash of The Da Vinci Code thrown in to muddy the waters.