Fixed those movie links below. I woke up late enough so the only matinee I was able to catch today was the 2:50 screening of James' Journey to Jerusalem. It was pretty good, and a nice dose of a foreign language film that wasn't Asian or French. It was interesting because the film had a "spiritual" component in the title character, but just as interesting was the look at Israel's seedy illegal immigrant underbelly, removed from the turmoil of regional politics.

I've been immersed in one of my favorite books lately, The Conference of the Birds, so the idea of the spiritual path has been informing anything I've been watching that has a religious bent, such as "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...Summer", which showed the spiritual path through the course of the season/life cycle. "James' Journey to Jerusalem" was more literal with the spiritual path in the form of a pilgrimage. James is slated to become pastor of his village in Africa, and is sent on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There's no explanation why he has to make this pilgrimage in order to become pastor, but the idea being he is sent away from home on a spiritual quest, and what he encounters and learns will enable him for the position. But like in "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...Spring", the spiritual path is fraught with temptation and human failings, and James immediately finds his journey stymied and himself tested.

I read a lot of the whole "distance from God" thing into it, which is central to so many Judeo-Christian-Islamic influenced stories. James has to lose his "divine sanction" (the dice), along with all that he has gained straying from the path, to make it to Jerusalem, and then there's how he gets to Jerusalem which is none too subtle, in a subtle and subtlely shot film. So it's like he starts close to God, he's "chosen" both by his village and spiritually, and he has to move away from God, i.e., become more human, to become God's messenger. Jerusalem is nothing. It's not holy. It means nothing to the pilgrimage. It's just where he goes to go back to his village.

There was also a very subtle, wonderful little parable within the movie that is worthy of the likes of the Conference of the Birds. Whenever there is something about a king and a slave, or father and son, or lovers in these stories, it's about God and humans, and it's as if the writer couldn't resist putting something in to make sure we realize this story was one of those. There was once an old man that lived on a plot of land in the slums of Tel Aviv. His son was a successful businessman and landlord whose next project was to build a lucrative apartment building. The only problem was he wanted to build on the land where his father lived. For years he argued with his father to buy the land, telling him he was too old to live alone and he should live in a nursing home. It got to the point that all they did was argue, and all there was left between them was contention and disdain. When the old man was asked why he wouldn't sell the land, he answered, "Because if I sell the land, I will never see my son again".