Posted on 02/27/2004 1:23:07 PM PST by Maigret
Nature Is Never Spent
A perennial theme resurfaces in academy contenders.
It may seem strange to someone...that nature should thus dissociate, and render men apt to invade, and destroy one another...Let him...consider with himself, when he takes a journey, he arms himself...; when he goes to sleep, he locks his doors...Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions, as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse man's nature in it. The desires, and other passions of men, are in themselves no sin.
(Leviathan)
This famous passage from 17th-century English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes encapsulates a distinctively modern conception of the natural condition of human life as a state of war. Evidence of the state of war, Hobbes argues, perdures in civil society. Something like this Hobbesian account of nature is on display in a large number of contemporary films, from the horror film 28 Days Later to Clint Eastwood's Academy Award-nominated Mystic River.
But this is not the only conception of nature operative in contemporary motion pictures. More complex and more dramatically satisfying accounts of nature can be found in two other Academy Award-nominated films: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the latter of which reprises a notion of nature that has proven to be surprisingly durable.
Mystic River, set along the eponymous river in a rough section of Boston, involves a reunion of sorts for three childhood buddies: Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn), and Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins). Just as in their childhood, the defining memory of which is the abduction and abuse of Dave, so too in adulthood, the three are united by a crime. The film exhibits not only the tragic endurance of childhood trauma into adult life, but also the communal dominance of an exacting and unspoken law of competition and retribution. Thomas Hobbes predicates equality on the threat of violent death that each human being poses to every other human being. Similarly, in Mystic River there is no real hierarchy of human types; there is a variety of psychological or personality types that divide ultimately into two categories: those who have the capacity to recognize the laws of nature and to act accordingly, and those who do not. Characteristic of the human condition is a restless wariness, a necessity always to be on guard, even with those whom one has trusted in the past. This is the film's version of Hobbes's "restless desire for power after power." Nature itself in the form of the river, to which the camera frequently turns, conceals the secrets of crimes and victims. The most chilling scene in this film contains no violence; it simply records the silent, knowing glances of the survivors as they gather on the street for a patriotic parade. The scene forcefully displays the way the law of natural warfare exists in the midst of the public affirmation of law and order.
With its omnipresent ocean, the film Master and Commander, which relates the seafaring exploits of British captain Lucky Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe), captures nature in its magnificent unpredictability, its awesome beauty, and its impersonal fury. Fueling the drama of the film is the bellicose competition between nations, in this case the British and the French. But, unlike Mystic River, Master and Commander captures not just the natural competition between men and nations, but also the nobility of friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice. Captain Aubrey's vessel is a ship of state, in whose galley the central issue is virtuous statesmanship, which must operate in the midst of two great dangers — religious superstition and Enlightenment scientific liberalism — even if Aubrey finds room for a proper role for both religion and Enlightenment. The great fear of every captain is a Jonah, a religious man whose presence curses the expedition. But another, less noted threat on the ship is the pure passion for scientific knowledge, which is represented in this case by the ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), Aubrey's good friend and confidante. The ship's travels take them around the Galapagos Islands, whose shores Maturin longs to visit. Indeed, Maturin presses Aubrey to place the quest for scientific knowledge above the demands of battle. When Maturin is finally given the opportunity to pursue his scientific interests, he finds, in a clear anticipation of Darwin's discoveries and theoretical breakthroughs, a bug that disguises itself to avoid predators. For Captain Aubrey, who craves the technological advances that will render his ships and armaments less vulnerable to enemy attack, the bug's defensive mechanism suggests a battle plan. It also serves as a metaphor for human survival in war.
Statesmanship in Master and Commander is not, however, just about domination or the survival of the fittest. The film displays the way human beings, even under the pressures of war, strive to lead civilized lives, lives that include fine wine, excellent music, elevated conversation, and noble stories. Moreover, the occupants of the ship have access to standards by which they can appraise the leadership of the captain. Over the course of the film, the captain is both praised for his fearlessness and falls under a cloud of doubt for his alleged pride, exemplified in the readiness with which he exceeds his orders. There are reasonable grounds for praising or blaming rulers, and this suggests that there are natural limits to — and guides for — political rule.
At the end of Master and Commander, the outcome of the central issues — such as that of the duel between the French and British ships — remains unresolved. One of these inconclusive issues has to do with the conception of nature as a brutal, amoral contest for survival — operative in Hobbes and Darwin — and the conception of nature as displaying a hierarchical scale of excellence of character, excellences not reducible to strategies of survival.
If Master and Commander reflects certain ambiguities and tensions of the Enlightenment, the blockbuster hit of the year, the final installment in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, encompasses the modern conception of nature within a more comprehensive, mythic vision of nature as a manifestation of divine order. If modernity involves, among other things, the disenchantment of the natural world — and, consequently, of the human world — then LOTR represents a figurative re-enchantment of the entire cosmos. And that, for Tolkien, is precisely what nature is: a cosmos, a beautifully ordered whole. Nature in Middle-earth, where the technological is always potentially at war with the natural, is the antithesis of Hobbes's mechanical conception of "life as but a motion of limbs."
Yet Tolkien does not, as do so many Romantic anti-Enlightenment thinkers, oppose reason, nor is he, as are many radical conservationists, eager to see human beings as a necessary blight upon the environment. Human beings, who above other species seek power, are capable of doing great harm, not just to other species but also to themselves. The trilogy gets underway with the pursuit of the Ring by the Ringwraiths, whose physical hollowness symbolizes the moral depravity to which humans are vulnerable. But the finale ushers in the return of the human king, Aragorn.
Despite this point of triumph, the film does not end with the moment of victory or the return of the King, but with the sorrowful parting of Frodo and Sam. The ring-bearer has suffered an injury that neither time nor nature can heal. Yet Frodo is not without recourse or hope. As is clear from the providential shape of the narrative of LOTR, nature itself is invigorated and renewed by a transcendent, providential, divine power, whose resources are never extinguished.
The remarkable popularity of the LOTR trilogy, the greatest trilogy in American film — and deserving of the Oscar if only for this reason — is a sign of the enduring appeal of a conception of nature that is at once ever ancient and ever new. Outside of Tolkien, its most eloquent proponent is the distinctively modern poet and 19th-century Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who describes nature as "seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil," as wearing "man's smudge" and sharing "man's smell." Yet, he continues,
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
— Thomas S. Hibbs is distinguished professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University and a contributor to NRO.
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