Don't stop believin'

Air is a biopic you can believe in, says Yaroslav Walker, thanks to an awesome soundtrack and the hint of deeper themes.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A woman stands in a kitchen diner hold a phone with a cord.

Viola Davis negotiating down the line.

Warner Bros

Air should not work as a film. A sports biopic that barely has any actual sport in it, but has plenty of shoe design. A plot that revolves around the character of Michael Jordan (considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time, if not the greatest athlete of all time) which goes as far as to show the back of his head until the end credits, when stock footage takes over. A film that drops a number of hints about interesting character development (Matt Damon’s gambling, Jason Bateman’s daughter), and then never follows them up. None of this should add up to much…and yet it does.

Mark Kermode (very much this reviewer’s lodestar of critique) has often opined that you know a biopic is doing its job when it makes you invested in a field you know nothing about. Senna makes you care about motorsport. Cinderella Man makes you care about boxing. Well, Air genuinely made me care about corporate sponsorship and shoe design…and I certainly wasn’t expecting that!

The script is fondue levels of cheesiness, Matt Damon gives a climactic speech which simply oozes baked Camembert.

The direction is fine – Affleck has shown that he can be perfectly competent as an actor/director, and he does a fine job. The script is fondue levels of cheesiness, Matt Damon gives a climactic speech which simply oozes baked Camembert, but is also laugh out loud funny on more than one occasion. The performances are all on point: Matt Damon and Viola Davis can pull-off earnest roles in their sleep, and Affleck and Bateman deliver some decent ‘straight-man’ material. Affleck also demonstrates his directorial skills with shrewd and limited use of actors who can over-stay their welcome (Chris Tucker…small doses).

However, the thing that sells the film to me is the soundtrack. The film is one big nostalgia-trip, and I loved it for that. I have long championed the theory that the 1980s was the best decade for popular music, and this film confirms my theory. The moment the Violent Femmes started to play I was sold. Cindy Lauper, Run-D.M.C, Springsteen, The Alan Parsons Project! BLISS! Throw in a Smiths and a Bowie track and I’d be giving this film an Oscar! 5 stars (but only because I’m listening the soundtrack at this very moment).

Air hints at some deeper themes (although it does little more than hint) and one of these is the power of belief, the power of having faith in something. Affleck’s shoe-mogul, Phil Knight, has had faith in himself to build up Nike as a successful brand – and now spouts lazy quasi-Buddhist aphorisms. Davis’ Deloris Jordan has absolute faith in her son’s sporting ability, and refuses to allow it to be overlooked. Damon’s Sonny (a talent scout for possible sponsorship opportunities) is a gambler – he has belief in his own luck, his own scrappy attitude. He shoots craps in Vegas and demands his bosses back him because of his gut: ‘This is what I do here, and I really feel it this time!’ He truly believes in the value and power of sport to change his fortunes, and to change the world.

From a Christian perspective it raises some interesting ideas, but doesn’t raise them quite high enough. The Christian life is one of belief, one of faith, one of ‘taking a chance’. Yet, the chance the Christian takes is not really a gamble, not a roll-of-the-dice, but a relationship. The Christian takes a chance, but it is taking a chance on love. Whereas the characters of Air take a chance on the sporting ability of a yet un-tested Michael Jordan, the Christian finds a certain surety in the loving embrace of Jesus Christ. Having religious faith, having Christian faith, is so often mischaracterised as a blind gamble – rather it is a relationship with one who loves us unconditionally, and so is not as irrational as assuming one can win shooting dice, but is the truest and most sensible thing one can do.

Review

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11 December 2024

1 min read

All this can be yours: the momentum that drives mafia states

Once abhorred opinions gain traction among the distracted nursing grievances.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Preisdent Putin stands behind a lectern with a gold door and Russian flag behind him.

What is Putin thinking?

Is there a new Cold War today? This assumption, spurred by the war in Ukraine, is challenged by Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc. (Penguin Random House, 2024). Instead, she argues, there is a growing group of autocratic nations where ruling elites exercise staggering levels of corruption, accumulating wealth, eviscerating the common good and suppressing any meaningful dissent. There is rule by law rather than rule of law, where the courts become the means by which brutal, cynical state power is employed to destroy and imprison opponents.

The Cold War was underpinned by ideology, but autocratic states today support one another through logistics, resources and propaganda despite big differences in outlook. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Russia and Zimbabwe, to name a handful of autocratic nations, share little by way of common ideology, except the desire of their dictators to stay in power, both to ensure their wealth and to protect themselves from legal action. The fig leaves of religious beliefs and nationalism are often used in different combinations but fool few.

If there is a common denominator for these autocracies, it is the wish to scrap the post-war settlements – the institutions and laws that have marked global affairs since. The body of existing international law is a particular target, as its dismantling immunises dictators against judgment.

Framing the present global picture in clear, criminal terms like this is helpful. Mafia states exist, and they are growing in influence. But it is too easy for others to place themselves on the side of the angels. These kleptocracies have been enabled by corporate bodies elsewhere. In the UK, London is host to lawyers, accountants, bankers and PR experts who have helped to launder money for corrupt elites. They argue their support is legal, but it is also amoral; such is the professional framework of some of the biggest names in law and finance. London’s property market, like several other global capitals, has been grossly distorted by the laundering of foreign money, to the detriment of working people trying to afford their own homes.

At the end of the Cold War, there was a widespread sense that liberal, democratic values had prevailed and it only remained for this dye to leak into the fabric of remaining nations. Not only is this not true today, if anything the momentum is with autocratic values infecting democracies with their ways. The global technology revolution has assisted this, as once abhorred opinions and positions gain traction in the minds of distracted people with grievances, real or imagined.

There is a special hypocrisy when criminals who have stolen billions and murdered thousands claim to speak for God.

The late Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, said the key question for the new century was: who speaks for God? If the suggestion was that this is a question different religious traditions need to answer in ways that support our common humanity, we now have no shortage of dictators who say they speak for God. Their claims that other regions of the world are godless and degenerate are made time and again. Like Goebbels, they know that the endless repetition eventually wears people down until phrases become believable. No-one who cares about God’s character would claim their society reflects his character well; there is injustice, hatred and violence everywhere. But there is a special hypocrisy when criminals who have stolen billions and murdered thousands claim to speak for God.

When Jesus faced his life-defining temptation in the wilderness, the devil showed him the kingdoms of the world and promised they would be his if he ‘turned’. He also tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread. Power and wealth, the very trappings coveted by the world’s dictators. And his final temptation: to throw himself from the roof of the Temple, only to be saved by the angels. To surround himself with a loyal cadre of officers sure to protect his interests at all times.

Instead of the highway to autocracy, Jesus took the uneven and winding path of service to others. One of self-denial, deprived of the material wealth made available by his elevated position. This is the human standard we have been set and it compels self-reflection, not boasting and threats.