The world will be saved by beauty.
Dostoyevsky

Out of all the instinctual needs we humans have to put up with – sex, food, sleep, fresh air, water – the most important and least recognized need of all is beauty. It’s what magnifies us into human beings.
Laura Hendrie, Remember Me

The Academy Awards were last night – the presentation of the Oscars. In many ways this is an event of self-congratulation and nearly obscene excess. It brings out some of our worst characteristics – our obsession with wealth and physical beauty and style. Yet with some ambivalence in my heart, I really enjoy the Oscars. I enjoy the Oscars because I enjoy movies. While I like movies that make me laugh, or that pull me into their plot, the movies I love best are movies in which I come to care for the characters in some way, movies in which some part of the human condition is illumined through the acting of the persons on screen. There is a beauty in such movies, and it is often enhanced by other forms of beauty in the film.

I am drawn to beauty. I remember sitting with a group of clergy in which one cited the Dostoyevsky quote above and said, “What is that supposed to mean?” I was not sure, but I was drawn to the words and felt some sort of truth in them. A few years earlier, I had read Remember Me, a novel by Laura Hendrie and copied the above words into my book of quotes. Beauty seems to magnify us into human beings. Not long after being in the clergy group where Dostoyevsky was mentioned and then passed by, I was reading a book on the Enneagram. I had taken that inventory once, and came out as type four – the creative person, the romantic. So I am reading this book and lo and behold, there is Dostoyevsky – “the world will be saved by beauty,” followed by “FOURS believe this principle.” (Rohr and Ebert, The Enneagram) A little frightening if you ask me.

So something in me draws me to beauty like a moth to a flame. Music, literature and movies are my preferred conveyances of beauty (though beauty in paintings and photography and in the natural world itself are also powerful) – and I think beauty can contribute to changing the world. I know in my life the power of film to shape me.

I vividly recall the beautiful black and white of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and the scene toward the end where the character played by Allen is speaking into a tape recorder, getting down a story idea, shifting to asking himself what makes life worth living. The list included Louis Armstrong’s Potato Head Blues and Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, Cezanne’s pears and the face of a woman. I have often thought about what I might put on my list. As a person of faith, I think of beauty and creativity as qualities in which God often shines.

My view of racial justice was formed in many ways. I remember the beauty in the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. His words were powerful, yes, and also beautiful, and to hear them was to encounter a certain beauty. But one distinct influence on my view of race relations was watching the movie Brian’s Song in junior high school. The film was a made-for-television movie portraying the story of the relationship between Gayle Sayers (played by Billy Dee Williams) and Brian Piccolo (played by James Caan). Sayers and Piccolo were Chicago Bears running backs, and Piccolo died young from cancer. Sayers was African-American and Piccolo caucasian. It was a moving film for me. From certain aesthetic standards, it may not be beautiful, but it had a touching beauty for me.

In a world beset by such pressing problems, art, film, music, beauty can seem like luxuries. I certainly would not bless all that happens in the movie industry. There is excess and so many movies are inane and anything but beautiful. But film can be powerful in the service of good. Deep down I believe there is a connection between the true, the good and the beautiful. Moved by beauty, inspired by it, I live differently. I seek a better world.

With Faith and Feathers,

David

P.S. I did not see all the Oscars last night, but from what I saw, my favorite moment was the award for best original song. The movie Once is a delight. It is about creativity and it was made for under $200,000. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova make wonderful music together, and that is the basic point of the film – that and creatively beginning life anew. Hansard and Irglova were delightful in accepting their Oscar. Hansard encouraged people to “keep making art” and Irglova spoke of hope “which connects us all.”