Article
Culture
Film & TV
4 min read

The Oscars and ourselves

Beyond the shiny escapism, the awards spotlight all our stories.
A closely cropped group of gold Oscar statues showing mostly their head and shoulders.
Oscars.org

The Oscars are a funny old thing, aren’t they? Every year, I find myself wondering why we care about them so much.  

And sure, we could go for the low-hanging answers: because the show is brimming with glamour, because it’s packed with celebrity, because we may be treated to Ryan Gosling performing his Barbie anthem with Slash. We’ve been trained to gravitate toward such things, and that makes the Oscars the jackpot. And so, while shiny escapism is an undeniable aspect of the enormous hype attached to the Academy Awards, I think it would be unfair to assume that these are the only reasons we are still so drawn to this event.   

If we’re meaning-making creatures, and I believe that we are, then these films mean something.  

I once heard renowned mythologist, Dr Martin Shaw, say that ‘story is the best way to talk about almost anything’, and I wonder if cinema is evidence of how heartily we agree. The stories that are being crafted and told are important, they matter, they actually affect things. Or, at least, the good ones do.   

And this year, when I assess the films that swept up the majority of the prizes at the 96th Academy Awards, I noticed a trend. I noticed that these films are essentially humans talking to humans about what it means to be human.   

In many ways, for better or for worse, we spent 2023 telling stories about ourselves. Allow me to break down what I mean.  

These movies tell us of our own brokenness, our own breaking-things-ness.

Oppenheimer, which won six awards, and Zone of Interest, which was the first British film to win the Oscar for Best International Film – they tell our darkest stories. We know the 20th Century horrors of the dropping of the atomic bomb and the Holocaust, but these two movies introduce us to the faces behind the horror. And, what’s more, they hauntingly remind us that those faces could have been ours. They introduce us, not to monsters that we can keep at a comfortable distance, but to people who sanction, create and do the unimaginable, and then go home for dinner with their children.   

People did these things. People like us. These movies tell us of our own brokenness, our own breaking-things-ness. They remind us that the possibility of evil is not beyond us, it is within us, and that the most dangerous thing one could do is to believe otherwise.  

But then there was the acutely tender The Holdovers, and the deeply profound Past Lives. These movies tell of our gentleness, our fragility, our innate need for intimacy; they remind us that we were designed to be known and loved. They reintroduce us to our deepest and most innate needs - The Holdovers, in particular, tells us of the sacrality of relationship. Its success has me wondering if a story of three lonely people forced to spend Christmas together in an empty boarding school could tell us more about what our souls require than any academic deep dive. 

Yet again, these films seek to tell you the story of you; they aim to be windows into the souls of the characters, while also acting as mirrors through which we can catch glimpses of our own.  

Each movie, in one way or another, was a wrestle with personhood. What makes us, us?

And finally, there were two films, Barbie and Poor Things, which, to criminally over-simplify them, are the stories of two women (or, rather, one toy and one new-born baby in the body of a grown woman… don’t ask) who are working out what it means to be a person. Both Barbie and Bella Baxter walk through worlds that are entirely new to them, but completely familiar to their audiences. They assess the good and the bad of humanity as if utterly detached from it, until they are forced to confront their own place in the worlds that they are slowly coming to terms with. As is written into the script of Poor Things and was read aloud over a montage at the Oscars ceremony,  

‘We must experience everything. Not just the good, but degradation, horror, sadness. This makes us whole Bella, makes us people of substance. Not flighty, untouched children. Then we can know the world.’ 

(Is it me, or is there a little touch of – ‘just take a bite of the apple, Eve’ in there?) 

So, you see my point – this year, in the world of film, humans talked to other humans about what it means to be human. Each movie, in one way or another, was a wrestle with personhood. What makes us, us? Where does our propensity for goodness come from? How are we this clever? And how are we this clueless? Why do we do such evil things? And why do we have such tender needs? What is the difference between the worst and the best that we could possibly be? What and why are we? Or, in the simple words of Billie Eilish’s Oscar-scooping song – what were we made for?  

And listen, perhaps this is always somewhat the case. Maybe every film can be boiled down this way, and maybe the Oscars are just a storm in a particularly glitzy tea cup. And maybe nobody would be talking about it this morning had Slash not been involved.  

But I just have this sense that these movies, and the prizes that they won, mean something. These existential-yearning kind of films, I’m not sure they’re going anywhere anytime soon – if we’re wondering what we were made for in such public places, I’m wondering if it’s because we’re also wondering the same thing in the most personal places.  

If you’re asking me, last night was filled with as many cultural heart-cries as it was prizes.  

Article
Belief
Culture
Music
5 min read

How Mumford and friends explore life's instability

Communing on fallibility, fear, grace, and love.

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A bassist hauls a double bass of its base as he plays it.
Daniel Boud/x.com/mumfordandsons.

“Serve God, love me, and mend” must rank as one of the more unexpected openings to a hugely popular album in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. A quote from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, it introduces us to the potent mix of Shakespearean and Biblical allusion and imagery to be found on Mumford and Sons debut album Sign No More.  

Sigh No More, both as song and album, begins with confident assertions of faith then moves into acknowledgement of human fallibility and prevarication summed up in the Shakespearean phrase that “Man is a giddy thing” before asserting that love does not enslave but is freeing, enabling those who know it to become the people they were meant to be. The song ends with a prayer to see the beauty which will come when the protagonist’s heart is truly aligned with love. Throughout the album, the overriding concern is that personal fallibilities and fears – the darkness within – will prevent grace from having its full effect and the beauty of alignment with love from being fully realised. 

In many Mumford and Sons songs such personal instability is the problem to be resolved; “Man is a giddy thing”, “Why do I keep falling?”. Their search is often for the relationship or place that will provide stability:  

I can't say, "I'm sorry," if I'm always on the run 

From the anchor (‘Anchor’) 

‘Roll Away Your Stone’ describes the darkness within as a God-shaped hole filled with false gods: 

See you told me that I would find a hole 

Within the fragile substance of my soul 

And I have filled this void with things unreal 

And all the while my character it steals 

but this is not how life has to be: 

It seems that all my bridges have been burned 

But, you say that's exactly how this grace thing works 

It's not the long walk home 

That will change this heart 

But the welcome I receive with the restart 

Lead singer and songwriter Marcus Mumford knows how this grace thing works because, on the one hand, his parents founded the Vineyard Church UK and Ireland meaning he grew up in the context of grace and, on the other, he seems to have experienced grace personally in relation to the sexual abuse he suffered as a child (which was not experienced in his family or his church). In ‘Grace’ from his self-titled solo album he contrasts grace, flowing like a river, with the experience of acknowledging the abuse he endured and the healing for which he prays. 

Such biblical allusions and references abound in the songs of Mumford and Sons, as is also the case with some of those with whom they performed, supported or inspired. The Nu-folk movement of which the Mumford’s were part, began at a club called Bosun’s Locker in Fulham. There, with the likes of Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale, and others, their musical journey commenced. Noah and the Whale’s first album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down featured philosophical rumination on a par with that of Sigh No More including lines such as: 

Oh, there is no endless devotion 

That is free from the force of erosion 

Oh, if you don't believe in God 

How can you believe in love?          

Following the closure of Bosun’s Locker, Ben Lovett from Mumford and Sons, with others, set up Communion Records, a network of musicians, songwriters, industry and music fans who all share a common philosophy and set of ideals. Among the artists supported by Communion have been Bear’s Den and Michael Kiwanuka. 

Bear’s Den is one of several bands, which also included Dry the River, that have used religious and spiritual symbols in their songs. Andrew Davie from Bear’s Den has said: “I wouldn't say I'm particularly religious, but I was brought up going to church every Sunday, I studied a bit of religion in school and just from going to Sunday school, it's almost that I know the stories so well, that I find it a cool way of telling more modern and more nuanced stories about my own life. As a backdrop to that I find it just constantly helpful and it's quite a powerful way to talk about things. It adds weight to me.” Similarly, Matthew Taylor of Dry the River said of the theological imagery in lead singer Peter Liddle’s songs: “It’s always been a tool for Peter I think, to use the imagery you’re talking about, to add weight to what he’s writing about. It’s rich imagery, and the ideas are ones that people can relate to easily, if there’s that familiarity there.” Both recognise, as do Mumford and Sons, the continuing power of Christian ideas and imagery and their resonance for young people. 

Michael Kiwanuka was surprised that his early song about faith ‘I’m Getting Ready’ was enthusiastically released first as the title song of an EP from Communion Records and then by Polydor as a single from his debut album Home Again. Kiwanuka, who is married to Christian singer Charlotte, has consistently expressed aspects of his faith through songs like ‘Love and Hate’, ‘One More Night’, ‘Solid Ground’, and ‘Floating Parade’. Alexis Petridis has noted that Kiwanuka sees more people searching for a belief system: “Having a faith in things now is, I think, a lot more acceptable, whatever faith it is. There’s no dogma, necessarily. We’re connected by the struggles we have and I think that’s what I’m singing about – being a human being and trying to overcome, which is what we’re all doing in a way.” 

Whether opening up space for bands to utilise the power of Christian imagery in their songs or enabling singers with a Christian faith to be heard on mainstream labels, Mumford and Sons, by example and support, have created opportunities for faith to be explored and appreciated. The response to their music, its themes, and those of artists with whom they connect, seems to reflect a growing openness to spirituality and faith. As they sang, together with Pharrell Williams, on ‘Good People’, “Welcome to the revelation”. 

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