"THE THIRD MIRACLE"

Though DVDs are nifty and I love mailing them back and forth to Netflix, I still feel some loyalty to the 8-track of movies, the VCR. And it’s still possible to pick up used tapes at Pamida for only a few dollars. Sometimes they are stinkers, like the recent “Imaginary Heroes,” which starred Sigourney Weaver and bragged of special awards. The theoretical 14-year old Aussie boy who posts on imdb.com loved it, but I thought it was the most cynical, empty little piece of social corruption I’d seen for a while. (Though there was another previous blind buy that was so totally nasty that I put it in the trash -- but that was a murder mystery book.)

“Imaginary Heroes” was about an upper-middle-class suburban family where the mother has in the past had an affair with a married neighbor. We don’t know this at first -- we only know this is a seriously derailed family. The son, who sometimes seems to be the focus of the movie, tries going to bed with the neighbor boy -- son of a neighbor woman who seems to hate his mother (guess why) -- but doesn’t discover he’s gay. Instead discovers this is his half-brother. No one is who they seem to be and no one is honorable. This seems to be the big break-through philosophical message of the movie. Ugh.

But this last time -- for $4 -- I struck it lucky: “The Third Miracle,” directed by Agnieszka Holland. Ed Harris is the “bankable star” who plays a Chicago priest who specializes in debunking supposed saints in order to discourage the crass sentimentality of their exploitation. The REAL star of the movie is Armin Mueller-Stahl, born in Prussia in 1930. Harris is excellent, but it is the flint of Mueller-Stahl, who has the formal job of “Devil’s Advocate” from Rome, that lets Harris strike fire. Mueller-Stahl is elegant, sophisticated far beyond the local high church officials (Charles Haid is lots of fun as the Chicago bishop.), and entirely believable. He presses Harris harder and harder over his own faults as a cop’s son who became a priest in a young man’s bargain to save his father’s life -- he thought. As soon as Harris had committed to the priesthood, his father had died, plunging him into emptiness.

This is grim stuff. We’re relieved that the saint has a ditzy daughter played by Anne Heche, who is entirely anchored in reality and rather inclined to seduce the priest. She’s a bit of a gimmick, but she’s fun.

In my opinion (which is theos-resistant) all religions are projections on the mammoth kuppelhorizont of the Cosmos -- we see ourselves and what we value, but on a scale almost beyond our own comprehension. The Old Testament religion comes out of desert imagery and tribal experience. The theos there is a tribal chieftan who is becoming the king of cities as agriculture begins to create cities and nations. But it can be a cruel and oppressive kind of reign, over-invested in control and loyalty. So the New Testament, born in turmoil and resistance, changes the focus to the human family: the theos is the father. This change means that the religious kernel can be exported anywhere there are families but it has some real weaknesses.

The main one is in the nexus between father and son, all that confused love and resentment. A big part of it goes by the name of “theodicy,” which is summed up by Archibald Macleish in his enduring play, “J.B.”, this way: “If God is good, He is not God. If God is God, He is not good. Take the even, take the odd -- I would not live here if I could except for the little green leaves in the spring and the wind on the water.” (Why isn’t someone reviving this play on Broadway right now?) In other words, the church constantly emphasizes that God is a loving father who will protect us, even as we suffer unbearable cruelty and injustice.

One result of God’s seeming indifference and dirty tricks has been a turning to the “Mother,” who speaks to God on our behalf (presumably when He gets home from work at the end of the day) and sometimes manages miraculously to heal the pain. So this Saint, a woman and mother, has devoted herself to helping children while turning away from her own daughter. (“Well, I survived!” says the brave daughter.) The priest’s mother died when he was small, which is not irrelevant though not emphasized.

The first miracle is that through this saintly dead woman, a small girl who has been abused by her own mother and who has lupus, prays to a statue of Mary (which always seems to have an immaculate white fantail pigeon on its head!?) and the statue weeps real blood which cures the girl’s lupus.

The second miracle is actually earlier, in the childhood of the “saint,” when she prays to Mary to turn away bombs during WWII and succeeds. Can’t tell you much without spoiling the plot.

But Rome needs a third miracle. The implication of the plot at the end is that human grace -- babies, reconciliation -- are also great miracles even if we don’t pray for them and Rome doesn’t list them. The movie could have been dreadful but isn’t because it dilutes the sweetness with a bit of vinegar and the bitterness with genuine warmth, often from fellow religious.

A sub-plot is the deplorable tendency of all establishments, including established religion and particularly the Roman Catholic bureaucracy to constantly spin reality “for the good of the people.” Covering up, lying, denying, re-interpreting, suppressing -- we know all about it these days. So did Martin Luther. In this version most of it is fairly harmless, or at least motivated by care for the good of the whole. The luxury of the “Eminences” is rather ridiculous -- Charles Haid excuses his comic mud bath and massage on grounds that the body is a temple for the soul. But a bit later Harris as priest makes a convincing, if brief, defense of married sex for saints. (Of course, the saint’s husband took seven years to die of cancer and she was totally devoted to him.)

This movie doesn’t really resolve the problems of theodicy or bureaucratic corruption at the top, it relies on sentimental First Communion images a little too much, and it has some mushy spots in the plot. Just the same, it sketches out the main issues in a dignified and charming way and the real magic was done by inspired casting, including that pristine pigeon.