John Michael Talbot
I’ve just discovered that John Michael Talbot has his own blog:
http://johnmichaeltalbot.blogspot.com
If you’re not familiar with JMT’s lovely contemplative Christian folk music, one way to get acquainted is to visit his MySpace page:
Johnny Depp’s first chocolate film…
Chocolat came out about seven years ago, so maybe it’s a snooze for me to be writing about it now. But I watched it the other night, for the first time since returning to the Christian faith. It’s fascinating how a different perspective can enable us to view a familiar film with new eyes. When Chocolat was in the theatre, I saw it as a Christian-vs.-Pagan film: the Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina) stood for bedrock conservative Christian values, while his adversary (and our hero), Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche), the chocolatier who dares to open her shop in a provincial French village right at the beginning of Lent, is clearly the “pagan” figure: not only is her shop filled with art and artifacts from the pre-Christian Mayan culture, and not only does she dare to create a lovely chocolate statue of Aphrodite (which the Comte beheads in the story’s ironic climax), but she uses her chocolate “magic” to reignite lost sexual passion for one couple, to nudge a shy old bachelor to finally start wooing the charming widow he has for years admired from afar, and to help a badly battered woman finally leave her abusive husband — all this during a pre-Vatican II Lent!
Seven years go by since I first saw this film, and as part of the great humor built in to the fabric of the universe, during that time I joined the very church of which I saw the Comte as being so emblematic. So wouldn’t it make sense if this time when watching Chocolat I would find the movie slightly offensive, if not simply anti-Catholic? Well, actually, that’s not what I found at all. In fact, after this viewing, I’ve decided that Chocolat is actually a profoundly Christian movie, through and through. (more…)
