Unorthodox, a mini-series that debuted on Netflix a few weeks ago, is the story of a young woman who escapes from her oppressive Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and finds freedom with a group of welcoming friends in Berlin.
Tag: netflix
Film should be called The One Pope
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The new and much-ballyhooed Netflix film The Two Popes should, by rights, be called The One Pope, for it presents a fairly nuanced, textured, and sympathetic portrait of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) and a complete caricature of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).
This imbalance fatally undermines the movie, whose purpose, it seems, is to show that old grumpy, legalistic Benedict finds his spiritual bearings through the ministrations of friendly, forward-looking Francis.
But such a thematic trajectory ultimately does violence to both figures, and turns what could have been a supremely interesting character study into a predictable and tedious apologia for the filmmaker’s preferred version of Catholicism.
The Crown and the ‘primacy of grace’
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Like, I daresay, most of the English-speaking world, these past couple of years I’ve been watching episodes of The Crown, the beautifully filmed, marvelously written program on the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II.
The series deals with the psychological dynamics within the royal family as well as with the cultural changes and political challenges that the Queen has faced in the course of her long reign. But what has been, at least to me, most surprising has been the insightful and sympathetic way in which it has addressed issues of faith.
Especially in the first season, we saw the fairly frequent conflicts between Elizabeth’s devotion to her family and her role as head of the Church of England.
In season two, there was a deeply affecting episode on the visit of Billy Graham to the UK in the mid-50s. We saw that, despite reticence regarding the American evangelist on the part of some in the British establishment, the Queen found his preaching illuminating and uplifting.
The Crown and society’s core values
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The Netflix original series The Crown, which has to do with the last months of the reign of King George VI and the first years of the reign of his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, is just the kind of program that Americans in particular seem naturally to love.
It features beautiful photography of palaces, processions, and formal receptions; and it provides a behind-the-scenes look at the ne plus ultra of the British aristocracy. Consider it Downton Abbey on steroids.