ArteFact

We are hardwired to long for happiness. But is happiness something that wells up from within us or is it sourced externally, and if so, what are its terms? More to the point, who sets those terms, and what does the answer say about our ability to engineer our own happiness? Such are the questions I found myself asking as I watched the first season of Takehiro Kubota’s anime series My Happy Marriage.

Though I’m usually watching streamed content on a screen while lounging in a living room, rather than sweating in a sultry Grecian amphitheater, straining to hear the lines of masked actors, what moves me to pity and fear remains remarkably similar to what moved ancient audiences. Mr. Sunshine, originally broadcast in 2018, is one of the Korean shows I’ve enjoyed recently, and one of the highest-rated K-dramas of the past ten years. It is a sageuk, a type of historical drama that has flourished on the Korean silver screen for years, featuring large-scale dilemmas that would be familiar to ancient Greek audiences of tragic dramas.

Peaky Blinders is a popular and well-written crime drama from creator Steven Knight that aired on BBC Two and One from 2013–2022. It is exciting, intricate, sexy and thrilling. But it is more than a historical gangster drama. It is also a thoughtful reflection on freedom, the possibility of redemption, and living in death's shadow.

Christian art faces unique challenges: How is hope realized without sentimentalization? How to resist moralizing when grappling with modern skepticism? How to reveal the mysteries and paradoxes in the pursuit of truth and in reverence of the human person? These were just some of the challenges that Hawke and co-writer Shelby Gaines would face in creating Wildcat, a profoundly Christian film that depicts Mary Flannery O’Connor’s life and her fiction. But rather than appeal to the styles of Hollywood entertainment or rest content in the successes of convention, they chose a path that drew on the very Catholic realism that animates O’Connor’s stories.

“The real protagonist of history is the beggar.” In sharing this insight, Luigi Giussani underscores that real significance lies in the connection and encounter between individuals in their mutual humility, need, and search for fulfillment.

Living, the 2022 British period drama directed by Oliver Hermanus, is a film adapted from Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), itself inspired by Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Like its predecessors, the movie explores a middle-aged bureaucrat’s reaction to his terminal diagnosis (Mr. Williams portrayed by Bill Nighy in a Best Actor Oscar-nominated performance) as he struggles to discern if he has lived a meaningful life and, if not, what he needs to do to correct things. We will see that it is only through an attitude of vulnerability and humility—that of the beggar—that the other is lead to response to these needs.

Girls have always had dolls. These dolls were models of little girls. Playing with dolls, real girls would play at being mothers. That is, until Barbie: a doll that is simply a woman. In the opening scene of Greta Gerwig's Barbie (2023), Barbie appears (as a ninety-foot-tall Margot Robbie) and we watch as all the little girls smash their girl dolls on the ground. Upon seeing this, I thought to myself: this is abortion, this is contraception, this is independent womanhood opposed to motherhood: this is life (independence, self-standing) against death (separation, motherhood, letting be, being fruitful in another).

Last summer, Netflix released the fourth and penultimate season of the sci-fi horror drama Stranger Things to widespread rave reviews. Many fans saw this latest installment as a return to the exceptional storytelling of the show’s first season. For those of us with an interest in theology, it provided a compelling exploration of the age-old battle between good and evil that resonates with Catholic spirituality.

Reviews of HBO’s remake (2021) of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage have been lukewarm. While heaping praise on Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac—whose chemistry as a couple can make even divorce seem enviable—critics have questioned whether the five-part miniseries, created and directed by Hagai Levi, really adds anything to our understanding of marriage in modern life.

Although the title of Peter Morgan’s The Crown suggests a story about the monarchy and politics, the driving force of the Netflix original series is marriage. And, considering how the latest season ended with the breakdown of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Wales, it is beneficial to explore the theme of marriage thus far in the series, in order to enter thoughtfully into the anticipated fifth season’s treatment of the subject this coming fall.

“Look, see a world that holds more wonders than any since the earth was born . . .”

So begins writer and director David Lowry’s The Green Knight (2021), an adaptation of the 14th century Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This first line establishes the theme that animates the film: that our world is stranger than we can ever fathom, full of mystery and enchantment, and it is how we respond to this mystical order that occupies our lives.