Well it’s Thanksgiving Week, a time for gratitude. So my thoughts on Peter Berg’s recent film Deepwater Horizon seem timely.
I guess my only real gripe about the film is that Mark Wahlberg, as well as he does overall, can’t quite pull off playing a Texan.
Other than that, loved it. Among its qualities are:
- Great dialogue and natural character interaction (which prevail over the common tendency toward cartoonishness in these kinds of movies)
- Some of the most impressive action sequence effects I’ve seen in recent years
- A competent and virtuous male protagonist (something in relatively short supply in American popular culture)
Those who remember the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and subsequent spill of 2010 don’t need a plot summary.
It’s fairly simple: For fiscal reasons, the “big wigs” fail to ensure the soundness of the rig’s operation before the team of explorers come on board.
And then, to paraphrase the famed Beverly Hillbillies tune, “up from the sea came a bubbling crude,” bringing destruction and death rather than fortune.
After that, we accompany electrical engineer Mike Williams (Wahlberg) and others as they scramble to save the crew.
“Bookends”
I want to focus my commentary on a theme suggested by two scenes — one occurring near the beginning, the other near the end.
First, we see the “my daddy tames the dinosaurs” scene featured in the above trailer. Williams’ 10-year-old daughter, Sydney (Stella Allen), draws our attention to a fascinating piece of information we rarely think about: The oil under the earth comes from decayed dinosaur remains.
So taken poetically, oil disasters such as this could be thought of as the dinosaurs’ revenge.
The second scene occurs after the explosion, when nearly all the rig’s survivors have been rescued. Led by operational supervisor Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell), they all kneel and pray the Lord’s Prayer.
So the bulk of the movie is sandwiched between an apparent homage to man’s technological hubris, and a humble and thankful submission to the Creator after the former is defeated. Here, we have our theme.
Nature and man
Since the Renaissance, the period most historians will call the birth period of the modern frame of mind, our summum bonum has been “man’s conquest of nature.”
We’ve determined that by virtue of our intellectual power and technological ingenuity, we can and should overpower the world and bend it to our will.
What’s the problem with this? The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way:
Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.
(CCC 2415 — bold added)
And this is why imbalance occurs when we absolutize our dominion over creation (as with any time man claims godhood for himself).
In fact, the great C.S. Lewis submitted to readers in his book The Abolition of Man that man’s conquest of nature leads paradoxically to nature’s conquest of man.
I would fully agree with him. When man imposes his measurements and grids onto God’s world, onto everything he can observe with his senses and manipulate, it is only a matter of time before man himself falls under that grid.
Man, after all, is part of the natural world, being corporeal — as well as spiritual — in nature. (Hence, messing with our own bodies via various reconstructive surgeries, among other things, falls under the category of “man’s conquest of nature.”)
In the case of Deepwater Horizon, we see this phenomenon in the form of people being treated as theoretically possible casualties whose safety, and the likelihood thereof, are considered items in a cost/benefit analysis in which the scales are weighed in favor of time and money.
Obviously this operation is not being carried out with “religious respect for the integrity of creation,” of which man is a part, and in which his dignity holds pride of place.
If I haven’t adequately “fleshed out” Lewis’ comment on the paradox of man’s conquest of nature, I should mention that Deepwater Horizon also, and in the same fell swoop, shows us how this approach to human dominion exposes people to nature’s primal destructiveness.
When we lose our sense of awe and respect in the face of creation’s wild and dangerous grandeur, we lose part of our humanity. And when we let our guard down — as did folks involved in the Deepwater Horizon operation — the results speak for themselves often enough.
But doesn’t man have dominion?
As homo sapiens, we are superior to the rest of nature in that we possess intellect and will, in addition to the physical qualities of sense, growth, height, weight, and so on.
But that doesn’t mean the various elements of the natural world cannot overpower us via a greater share of the particular creaturely traits allotted to them.
Nor is it accidental that this possibility is in place. God has willed it so to keep us humble. For more details, see the effects of the first sin (Gen. 3: 17-19).
And therein lies the explanation of it all: Man’s self-imposed “demotion.” As Blesséd John Henry Cardinal Newman put it:
Woe to thee, man!
(. . .)
Who once had angels for his friends,
Had but the brutes for kin
– From “The Dream of Gerontius”
This situation becomes a little like that of a black slave in the old American South who might oppress his fellow slaves in order to achieve or maintain a higher station on his master’s plantation…
…or like a Nazi prisoner who enjoyed special privileges in the concentration camp for similar reasons.
My point: When people find themselves weakened and disenfranchised (whether through their own fault or not), they look for any opportunity to obtain whatever advantage they can, even if that means in some way dehumanizing their fellows or, as in the case of the man/nature relationship, lording it over their subordinates.
The true dominion of the true Man
Now I’m excited, because I get to talk about one of the many aspects of the Divine genius.
In one and the same action, Jesus Christ:
- reestablishes — nay, raises — humankind’s status in the world, and
- reclaims His own sovereignty.
The action in question is nothing other than the Paschal Mystery — the Cross and the Resurrection. In fact, through this same Mystery He unites Himself intimately with human suffering.
It is natural enough to ask such questions as, “Where is God in all this?” and “How could a loving God allow these things to happen?” But we must realize that we can, with eyes of faith, see our Crucified Lover in sickness, in the aftermath of natural disasters or warfare, and even in a burning oil rig.
As a Catholic, I firmly believe that Christ’s act of reclaiming sovereignty and restoring man’s place in the world via the Paschal Mystery is made present and effective in the Eucharist, which our Lord Himself established at the Last Supper.
There He gave to His Apostles the power and the command to transform bread and wine, the bounty of the earth, into His Body and Blood (in all but appearance).
And this is where we start to see the true nature of humankind’s dominion over nature — which, in fact, we see in the pattern of the Genesis creation account: Mankind is created on the sixth day, followed by God’s “rest” on the seventh.
As human beings, we are meant to lead creation to God’s Sabbath Rest. We are the priests of creation, and must offer it to God in an attitude of grateful reverence for the Creator Who provides for all our needs.
And if it takes an oil rig explosion to remind us of this high human calling and of the need for grateful reverence (remember the Pater Noster scene?)…well, it wouldn’t be the first time we had to learn the hard way.
Similar posts:
Why Huge Monsters Destroy Big Cities (I Think…)
On the Movie ‘Noah’ — Part Two: An Earth Day Tie-In
Human Pride and ‘Groaning Creation’ in the ‘Planet of the Apes’ Movies
Acknowledgements
By Unknown – US Coast Guard – 100421-G-XXXXL- Deepwater Horizon fire (Direct lin
k), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10089914
By Marcin Chady – Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcinchady/3854063132/in/photostream/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16535059
“C.s.lewis3”. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C.s.lewis3.JPG#/media/File:C.s.lewis3.JPG
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49908257
By Master of the Housebook (fl. between 1475 and 1500) – The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155266
By Vicente Juan Masip – [2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23065137
A very good movie that deserves to be seen. Nice post!
I agree! And thanks for stopping by, and for your kind words.