Reviews December 2022 / January 2023 - Reform Magazine
Compelling mythology
Son of the White Mare
Directed by Marcell Jankovics
Certificate 12, 86 minutes
Released on 4K Blu-ray
This 40-year-old animated film deserves to be better known. It recalls two perennial favourites. One is Fantasia (1940), where the idea of classical music liberated Disney from storytelling narrative and allowed his artists freer visual rein than in previous animated features. The other is the Beatles film Yellow Submarine (1968), which is likewise pioneering in its use of animation. Neither film is aimed at children (although both are child-friendly) and both have stood the test of time.
Although it doesn’t have an obvious brand to sell it, like Disney or the Beatles, Son of the White Mare (1981) is just as good. It’s a Hungarian film, which means it’s subtitled, and its source material is Hungarian folk tales. Broadly speaking, after a disobedient princess foolishly unlocks a castle door to release an imprisoned dragon, the three sons of the white mare must free three princesses from their dragon husbands and restore the kingdom from chaos. Like all the best fairy tales (and Yellow Submarine), it’s a story to return to over and over again, one of which you’ll never tire.
The constantly inventive, groundbreaking, visual design will keep you glued to the screen throughout. While the film is very cinematic, the writing is reminiscent of the Bible or mythological stories like The Iliad where events are related in a paired down, straightforward way, no matter how far removed from everyday experience they might be. There’s a quality that religion, fairy tales and mythology share: all of them are an incredible resource for talking about basic values of good and evil (not to mention morality or politics).
Like every other institution in our fallen world, the film distribution business sometimes gets it wrong. Sadly, this incredible film is not getting a theatrical UK release, instead going straight to 4K Blu-ray, and while I applaud the fact it can at least be seen on this format, it’s an absolute tragedy that it’s not getting an outing in our cinemas. An animated masterpiece. Go out and get it for your family or friends for Christmas!
Jeremy Clarke is a film critic. His website is jeremycprocessing.com
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Travelling the way
Gypsies and Jesus: A Traveller theology
Steven Horne
Darton, Longman and Todd
£19.99 hardback
ISBN 978-1-913657-94-9
This is a dangerous book. It seeks to counter prejudice and help people understand and accept gypsies (or Travellers or Roma) into local communities, welcoming them into church. It explores what difficulties gypsies face and how prejudice and ignorance cause offence and sometimes violence. To do so, it develops a rich theology based on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. It takes seriously how the Church welcomes those who are marginalised, using the term ‘Edgelands’.
I thought it a terrific read: challenging of our prejudices, educating and broadening horizons and opening up what we know as ‘the other’. We are living through a time when more and more people are being excluded from the mainstream – refugees, economic migrants, those of different sexualities and genders, the poor and, increasingly, people with disabilities. We are becoming a society divided, which wishes to protect what we have against what we imagine we will lose – a time of growing exclusion. It also raises the question: what does it mean to always be travelling, and travelling light?..
Martin Hazell is a retired United Reformed Church minister
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We can fix it
Saving Us: A climate scientist’s case for hope and healing in a divided world
Katharine Hayhoe
One Signal Publishers
£12.99 paperback
ISBN 978-1-9821-4384-8
Katharine Hayhoe is a climate scientist and evangelical Christian who brings a wealth of experience and understanding to the climate and ecological crisis. Hayhoe’s primary concern in this book is to encourage people to talk with each other about climate change. She covers the science with admirable clarity, outlines the obstacles to communication in our polarised world, and encourages listening to identify shared concerns. Her approach is deeply faith-based, as well as drawing on psychological and sociological insights.
Hayhoe begins by looking at the politicisation of the climate change debate, particularly but not exclusively in her North American context. For her, seeking shared values is rooted in a strongly biblical understanding: ‘What is more Christian than to be good stewards of the planet and love our global neighbor as ourselves?’ Hayhoe’s treatment of climate science, and some of the pseudo-science beloved by the denial industry, explores why it is easier to adopt ideas consistent with a sense of group identity rather than in response to factual arguments…
Peter Skerratt is a member of St Andrew’s URC, Ealing, London
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Ramabai the reformer
Let the Earth Hear Her Voice! Pandita Ramabai: Her life and work
Keith J White
WTL Publications
£19.99 paperback
ISBN 9 781916 451346
Despite weighing in at 800 pages – and 1.2kg! – this is an immensely readable, inspiring and enjoyable book. The author draws on 25 years of research to give us a detailed study of a pioneer of women’s education, who made an enormous impact in her day yet remains largely unknown today. One of Keith White’s motives in writing the book is to make his subject better known, a concern readers should be compelled to share after engaging with his work.
Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati (1858-1922) was a scholar, feminist, educator and social reformer – though such labels merely skim the surface of a truly remarkable life. Despite having no formal education, she wrote pioneering books, was widely respected as a Sanskrit scholar, became the first woman to address the Indian National Social Congress, and was the first woman to translate the Bible into her own language. And all this as a widowed mother, something quite extraordinary for her time…
Andrew Bradstock is a former United Reformed Church Secretary for Church and Society
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Roth and God
Endless Flight:The life of Joseph Roth
Keiron Pim
Granta
£25 hardback
978-1783785094
Flight without end, the title of one of Joseph Roth’s novels, was a metaphor for his life. Homeless, with no obvious place of belonging, Roth (1894-1939) was a journalist and author on the fringes of a world in which he felt himself an onlooker.
Born in Galicia, he never knew his father. The dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire after the Great War left hitherto well-protected Jews like Roth exposed to the full glare of antisemitism.
As Keiron Pim says, God was, for Roth, like the late Emperor: ‘the paternal protector who ruled over the vanished fatherland of his vanished childhood. He was not convinced that any of these could be found, but knew that the search granted direction to his life … at least he knew he was not only fleeing but pursuing.’..
Meic Pearse is Emeritus Professor of History at Houghton College, New York
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This article was published in the December 2022 / January 2023 edition of Reform
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