Friend or Foe: Maggie’s Plan
Until filmmaker, novelist, and funnywoman Rebecca Miller weighed in with the invigorating Maggie’s Plan, the history of films addressing the impasse between order and randomness — in theological terms, the conflict between free will and determinism — has rested on the mature products of profound Western European minds. Bresson’s Au Hasard, Balthasar and Dreyer’s Gertrud, for example, are stark, minimalist, and melancholic, with a divine presence at the very least implied. In Miller’s movie, intellectual musings are negligible in the fate debate. Destiny, whether embraced or resisted, is built into something more palpable: the actions of her quirky characters. Her earlier […]
by Howard Feinstein on May 16, 2016
