I was fortunate to catch THEM THAT FOLLOW (2019) at the Calgary Underground Film Festival last night. It’s an engaging film about the beauty and danger of religious faith. The people in this film live a religious life in full belief that God and the Devil intervene in one’s worldly affairs based on how strong one’s faith is, which must be tested by snake handling.

The film is about Mara, the preacher’s daughter, who lives in a small, isolated, Appalachian community of Pentecostals. Mara’s problem is she loves a young man who is a doubter and is distancing himself from the church, and she might be pregnant with his child. Her father wants her to marry another man who is gentle and properly devout, though when this man tells Mara how God calmed the demons in his heart and keeps them at bay, you get a glimmer of what he is capable of. To show their devotion to and trust in God, these particular Pentecostals are snake handlers. When they announce themselves ready for a test, they hold a rattler snake. If the snake calms, they pass, and if it bites you, you must face your next test, which is to survive the venom through faith without any medical attention.

Pentecostals are Christians who emphasize the agency of the Holy Spirit and believe God is something to be directly experienced, not ritually worshipped. The small rural community in this film are almost entirely true believers, including Mara, who is in love with a man and somewhat headstrong but must obey her father, church, and faith and marry someone else because that’s how it works, women must obey men in all things.

The resulting spiritual tension is fairly powerful because the story puts you in the shoes of somebody living in this world, where God is always watching and the Devil is always there to tempt you, and God must be loved and obeyed with energy and feeling every minute of the day. That’s the real strength of the film, which is how sensitively and immersively it handles empathy and point of view. Everything that happens is through Mara’s point of view, and Mara is devout. It doesn’t ridicule or moralize for or against Pentecostalism or even the snake handling. It doesn’t demonize her pastor father who controls her life. The tension culminates in a powerful last act where Mara is forced to make her final choice.

Overall, despite some clunky pacing and somewhat fuzzy development of the central conflict, THEM THAT FOLLOW is a solid drama that immerses you in people living in a highly restrictive and regulated belief system and worldview, and a young woman’s struggle between living the life of faith in which she was raised and the worldly love that she wants.

Written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who directed one of my favorite films–CHILDREN OF MEN–ROMA (Netflix) is about a family living in the upper-class Colonia Roma area of Mexico City in 1970-71. It’s a surprisingly powerful and compelling film in which the story and visuals work together almost flawlessly.

First, the story, which focuses on Cleo (played in a wonderfully understated way by newcomer Yalitza Aparicio), an indigenous live-in maid. She spends her days cleaning and taking care of the family’s four children, in many ways being a more active parent than the parents themselves. When she becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, she sees even worse security and grinding poverty ahead. Meanwhile, the family is in trouble as the father’s relationship with the family is becoming increasingly strained. It all culminates in a message of redemption and endurance against adversity.

It’s otherwise hard to describe the plot of the film, as there isn’t much of one. Partly autobiographical for Cuarón, the story rolls out as cinema verite. Things just happen, and the story just ends (or continues without us), though there’s plenty going on thematically if you want to think about it. This is one of the things I really like about ROMA, which is how it treats the viewer like a functioning adult. It doesn’t tell you what to feel, though you may feel plenty while watching it. There’s a lot going on in the subtext of the film, whether it’s the Corpus Christi massacre by paramilitaries during the Dirty War, or the common people struggling with the rich over land rights.

The second thing that really works about this film is the amazing cinematography. The film is shot in black and white, with plenty of wide angle shots, including long, calmly panning shots following a character through a busy street or even the ocean. As with CHILDREN OF MEN, Cuarón shows off how good he is at the visual set piece with ROMA, which involved the construction of vast sets. The result is stunning directorial control and a high-brow art house look and feel to the movie though without any of the usual tedium that goes with it. There’s always something going on on screen to focus on, something from real life to muse on.

When I first saw the trailer for this, I was surprised how much acclaim it had gotten, including multiple awards and nominations. It just looked a chore to watch, and hard to grasp what it was about. I’m glad I finally watched it, as it was very good, showing what can be done with a modest budget (just $4.4 million), characters we care about, social realism, and artistic cinematography.

At the end of 2016, I caught THE OA (Netflix original), a trippy sci-fi series with strong spiritual and a few horror overtones, and quite enjoyed it. Season 2 was a long time coming but worth the wait, delivering some answers while continuing to challenge with its trippy ideas.

In THE OA, Prairie Johnson (Brit Marling), a blind woman who went missing seven years ago, resurfaces in a public suicide attempt. She survives, and now by some miracle she has regained her sight. Back at home, she recruits five people to hear her story about being held captive by a scientist nicknamed Hap (Jason Isaacs), a psychopath obsessed with discovering evidence of an afterlife by subjecting his subjects to temporary death states to capture their near-death experiences. Instead of an afterlife, Prairie discovered a way to travel between dimensions revealed through “movements,” a strange dance that must be performed with perfect intent and feeling. At the end of season 1, Prairie is hurt. What happens next?

Season 2 opens with Prairie awaking in a hospital bed, but she is no longer Prairie, as her father hadn’t been killed during her childhood, she’d never been in an accident that resulted in her losing her sight, and she was never adopted. The dance worked; she is in an other dimension similar to ours but with some distinct differences. Hap and the other people from the experiments are already in this world, and now she has to find them. This story line is joined by two others that increasingly weave together, one involving a PI hired to find a missing girl, which takes him into a strange game and a house that holds a bizarre mystery; and the other involving the people the OA left behind in the other dimension, who have to find it in themselves to get to Prairie. All three plot lines are equally strong.

As I said, the show is trippy, but it always takes its crazy subject matter just seriously enough, and it is revealed so organically, that the show never quite jumps the shark the way LOST did on an almost constant basis. If something crazy happens, it isn’t because Brit Marling wants you to watch the next episode but because it is integral to a complex, developing plot. For that, I have to give it respect, and while in the end it was all a bit much, including a very meta finale, I really enjoyed it, and I’m anxiously awaiting season 3.

DAVE MADE A MAZE (2017) is a whimsical adventure comedy about a frustrated artist who decides to build a cardboard maze in his living room, only to become trapped in it as it takes on a life of its own. When his girlfriend leads a rescue team into the maze, they discover it is far larger than they imagined, and it is alive. This was a fun movie that gets an A++ for childlike wonder and set design and a B for storytelling. The end result is fun if a little flat, but overall I liked it quite a bit.

There’s a great deal of inventiveness about this movie, from the fantastic design made out of cardboard and household objects to the booby traps that kill some of the maze’s visitors (who spurt confetti and wool instead of blood and guts) to the engaging scene that brought Dave and his girlfriend back together. There’s a lot of silliness to the character interactions, which you just run with as it’s part of the show. While I didn’t fall in love with the protagonist and his girlfriend, I was rooting for them–particularly Dave’s friend Gordon, who brought a lot of personality to the film.

There were some distracting elements, such as the documentary crew (some of Dave’s friends) who come along; the odd ending that doesn’t resolve much, outright abandons two characters, and leaves the maze’s effects permanent (belying the childlike fun that fuels the story atmosphere); and the lack of character development, as the solution to the maze is a reflection of the answer to Dave’s character flaw, though once it’s accomplished, aside from Dave’s relationship with his girlfriend, nothing much seems to have changed.

So while DAVE MADE A MAZE wasn’t as fulfilling nor deep as I’d hoped, it was a lot of fun, with some amazing visuals, loads of weirdness, and plenty of wonder. Overall a B+ for me.