Through reviews and longer articles, ArteFact keeps a finger on the pulse of how our culture is reflecting on itself.
Film Fiction TheatreLogan, 2017. Directed by James Mangold
Looking back is a notoriously tricky business. Memories can entrap us, or themselves become distorted in our attempts to curate the past. In many ways, Kazuo Ishiguro's oeuvre is a study of human memory--falsified, true and otherwise. Writer Michalina Ratajczak traces the theme as it is woven into three of his novels, including his most recent, The Buried Giant.
In his acclaimed novel Silence, Shūsaku Endō questions the viability of the tree of Hellenized Christianity taking root in the “mud swamp” of Japan. What was once hospitable, fertile ground for the seed planted by St. Francis Xavier, becomes the land of a hunted and persecuted Christianity, as depicted in the story of two missionary priests and the community in their care.
As the Oscars pass Scorsese by, Mark Thomas thinks he knows why.
Suzanne Wolfe, The Confessions of X (Thomas Nelson, 2016).
Father Samuel Fontana reflects on how the pleasure of eating together engenders gratitude and builds community.
Mark Thomas ponders the anomalous fictions of the Coen Brothers' most religious films.
Manchester By The Sea, 2016. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan.
Lois Lowry, The Giver (Houghton Mifflin,1993; Ember Books, 2006)
Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock (Vintage Classics, 1931)