I just got back from the theater. I hadn't planned on staying late and watching anything after we closed tonight (most everyone who stayed is watching Grindhouse, whose only even vaguely alluring point is Rose McGowan [I love her!], and possibly Bruce Willis, depending on the role he's playing), but Lee called, and he wanted to watch The Reaping and suggested staying tonight to watch it. I figured I'd go ahead and do that in order to not have to make a special trip to see it.
So, I'm going through this phase. There's a lot about religion that confuses me, and a lot about it that is just generally not appealing, but then there's a lot that's definitely drawing me in. It's interesting, to say the least, and I'd like to learn a lot more about it than I actually know now. That being said, I'm not sure I want to know any more about Christianity at all. Christianity just generally doesn't make sense to me, so I tend to be blasphemous a bit more than occasionally. As soon as I saw the trailer for this film (which came out wayyyy back-- I remember us having to take it off of An American Haunting when that first came out), I wanted to see it. As much as I dislike Christianity, I still like to watch films that take a sort of analytical approach to it. I like to see films that are brave. Nothing like The Nativity Story, and I didn't even think about watching The Passion of the Christ (funny that it's abbreviated POTC like Pirates of the Caribbean...), but more like things such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose (which scared the crap out of me), The Omen and, of course, The Reaping (not to mention that Stephen Rea from Breakfast on Pluto and On the Edge was in it...). I like the films that have a dark religious side.
So, I was pretty intrigued when I read a synopsis of this film and saw that Hilary Swank's character (Katherine) was actually a former missionary who had lost her faith due to an accident (ahem) with her family. I just wanted to see the type of journey the character would make. It's obvious (at least to me) in watching the trailers that this woman, very devout in her lack of faith, was going to switch sides about three quarters of the way through the film, but I wanted to see how she got there. I don't like scary movies, but religious ones scare me the worst, probably because I've just been raised so Christian that anything blasphemous in regards to mortality freaks me out because I get a wicked case of "what if"s.
Anyway, Katherine has turned from a missionary to a specialist who investigates religious "miracles" and disproves them to be anything but scientific. She's so firm in her scientific beliefs that she goes to this town called Haven (nice and ironic, guys... good try) to try and tell the townspeople why their river had turned to "blood." Plague after plague start to happen, and she speaks on the phone to Michael (Stephen Rea), a priest who was in Africa with her on one of her missionary trips. She learns about a cult and about the way they go about creating the "perfect child" to carry out Satan's duties and how an angel will be sent to stop them.
I had it figured out about halfway through the film. So the rest of the time I was crouched behind my Harry Potter pillow and just wishing for it to end so I could get home and go to sleep. But then I started to think about the psychological effects this type of film would have on someone.
For example, if I were Hilary Swank (hah!) and I had worked on this film, what sort of impact would it have had on my faith? It's like Sunshine (oh, shut up!). Going to the sun would have a massive impact on my faith. If I started out where I am right now and going toward the sun, I would probably switch sides halfway there-- or at least when I thought I wasn't coming back. And then I started to think about the origin of religion, and came to my conclusion.
Religion was created by man. It does not exist. It is there to bring us comfort.
So I'm going to stick to my agnostic label, I think. Even if there's no God (I don't believe that there is), or gods, or whatever people believe in in regards to their religion, I believe in the higher power that is Imagination. Imagination, I think, will always be capitalized from now on. It took someone awfully Imaginative and creative to come up with a religion.
Does this make sense? Or is it just another Ramble?
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