Jesus and Water
My daughter wimped out in the cold on Sunday so we didn’t get to see the next in our movies nominated for best picture. We were going to see Babel but that will have to wait. Maybe she and I will take my wife (her mom) to see The Queen this week.

Anyway, I rented two nominees over the weekend.

Jesus Camp
Nomination: Documentary
This one is the controversial one among many in the blogosphere. Especially Christians. It is a look inside a Pentecostal Christian camp for kids and the ways the kids are trained (some would say brainwashed) into a particular religio-political point of view and attitude. Throughout the film I kept wondering what a documentary on all those camps I ran for our denomination would look like. I am working on some thoughts about this movie in depth. It is worth pondering this movie. There are some good ideas to be discussed and worked through- whether Christian or secular. Rent it and continue the debate.

Water
Nomination: Foreign Language Film
This film was controversial in India when it was first being filmed in 2000. They had their sets burned and they eventually had to relocate and start over. Hard to believe that a controversy would exist over such a lovely, tragic, love story in British-ruled India in 1938. Ah but the premise is pure Gandhian radical.

The Hindu scriptures require that widows live apart, never to marry again, even if they are widowed at age 8. But this new young widow shows up and the place is turned upside down. Life is brought to the lifeless, hope to the hopeless, even if it is just some forbidden sweets. Forbidden fruit is one of the underlying themes in an India waiting to be broken free by the powerful passive resistance of Gandhi.

The movie has deep beauty and reveals the hope that can bring people to do courageous acts. Even if it takes a little child to lead them.