Death without God

Charlie Kaufman is a very interesting, sad, funny, sad screenwriter. He is what Woody Allen is trying to be: absurdist/surreal, very funny, uninhibitedly crude; and underneath it all, profoundly sad. His first film, Being John Malkovich, was about a pupeteer who finds a portal into the head of John Malkovich. He can stay for 15 minutes until he is ejected onto the New Jersey turnpike. (No, I'm not making that up.) At one level, it's an extremely funny and inventive fantasy; but by the end, you realize it is about how we are all strangers in our skin, and we all want to be someone else - we all want to resolve our awkwardness and not-at-home-ness inside ourselves by pretending to be someone else. (The puppeteer metaphor works at several levels in the film.) But it always fails. Always.

You get only sadness in this clip:

After I saw that for the first time, I went and hugged my wife, and told her I loved her with all my heart, which I do; and then I went and hugged my kids. It's good for that, at least. But much more as well. I don't think we can really see Death for what it is; it always eludes us. But surely our lives would be better lived if we tried?

This clip helps me do this. It is about a playwright who is profoundly awkard and lonely and out of sorts. He stages an increasingly huge play in an old warehouse, even casting actors to play himself and his assistant as he organizes the play. This is his attempt at redemption: casting an actor to play himself gives him a little distance from his pain, and also lets him see the truth of his life. The best form of redemption he gets is one of the actresses who played his ex-wife telling him she is proud of him (something which never happens outside the play).

Kaufman clearly does not believe in God. "As you learn there is no-one is watching you, and there never was." A Christian's death does not mean the same thing as what death means here. But it is still death. We are and will be redeemed from death; but death still comes for us. I will lose my characteristics, one by one. The people who love me will die. The world will move on and forget me. I will realize I am not special; I am very ordinary. Eventually all the little hopes and fears I use to string myself along, all the carrots I put out in front of myself, will be taken away; and I will see them for what they were. The immense hopes I have will at best be partially realized; the worst fears, also so. I will no longer drive and yearn for the destination. I will simply drive, 7:44, 7:45.

But all my commentary is not worth much compared to the clip itself. He evokes what cannot be captured wonderfully. Now I'm going to stop writing and hug my family again, one more time, against the time when I have to say goodbye for the last time.