Another film, another ambiguous ending. Hmmmm. Try ONE of these (by the end of the day Sunday).
1. Corinne summarizes the early part of her conversation with the marriage counselor as follows: “Inside with you or outside with the dogs.” At the end of the film a dog awaits her on the church porch, and once she steps outside, a number of dogs gather around her. Has Corinne moved out with dogs or not? Or do the final moments of the film suggest another possibility altogether?
2. We asked about Luke’s talk with God in the previous post. Perhaps looking at three such episodes is helpful. Consider Sonny’s bedroom shouting match and Corinne’s demand for a divine audience (as she sits in the car just before Ethan arrives and confirms her departure) in conjunction with Luke’s call for a divine conversation. Are these monologues or dialogues?
3. We’ve seen and talked about grief in earlier films. What role does grief play here? Is this consistent with the other stories? Does a pattern emerge across the expanse of the past three weeks?
Question 3:
ReplyDeleteIn this movie, the main source of grief is Corinne's loss of faith. In all the other movies we have watched, grief causes the characters' faith to grow. They need something to hold onto and that something is usually God. Corinne is the opposite though. As the movie progresses, her faith actually weakens. She starts doubting herself, her relationship with her husband, and her relationship with God. The scene where she talks to God in the car is a good illustration of her doubt. She still wants to believe in God, and to love her husband, so she begs Hod to give her a sign. She tells him to stop her, but of course he doesn't, which reaffirms her doubts. In a way, that scene is almost like a goodbye of sorts. I think she knows nothing is going to happen, but she tries anyways. She is telling whatever she believed in that she doesn't believe anymore, but she wishes she did. I think Corinne had doubts throughout the whole movie, but she just pushed them down because she wanted to believe. She didn't fully believe in the ways of her community, it was clear that she didn't agree with female inferiority and submission to men. She looked doubtful when the older woman told her her dress was to tempting for men. She wanted so badly to believe in God, and her community, but in the end she couldn't.
Question 1:
ReplyDeleteDuring her conversation with the marriage counselor, they both present very extreme ideas of religion. You are either completely engulfed in your faith, having no doubt, and always striving to be perfect in God’s eyes, or you are a sinner and are damned to hell. While the counselor believes these two extremes, Corrine is starting to realize that there is an in-between, somewhere that she will be happy. As the film progresses Corinne starts to doubt her faith more and more because of the things she sees going on around her. She begins to realize that even though her faith is strong and her world may seem perfect, nothing that goes on around her turns out the way she believes that it should. Corinne begins the film believing the concept that with God anything is possible; however when her best friend has her brain tumor removed she loses all of her freedom; Corinne has to ask herself why would God let something so horrible happen to such a strong believer? When her marriage starts to fail it seems as though Corrine has lost her faith in God completely; she starts to fall for the postman and asks God for a sign to stop her. At first it seems as though God doesn’t give her sign, but when she enters the library, she sees the man happily married with a child. At the end of the film, Corinne preaches to the church about her doubt, but also her faith. Looking out in to the audience, it seems as though other people have gone through the same thing. While her husband stays, she takes her children and it seems as though this will be her last time in the church, but she hesitates at the door, half of her body in the church, the other half outside. This represents Corinne final stance in her faith, half in half out; she believes in God, but not completely, she has doubts.
The role of grief has played significant parts in the movies we have watched the past couple weeks. You have movies like Gran Tourino and Millions, where the person (mom/wife) the main character is grieving, passed away before the movie begins. And you have movies like Places in the Heart and The Apostle where a character is killed at the beginning of the film. In this film however, the grieving seems to be more focused on the death of the couple's relationship, love, marriage, and Corrine's relationship with God. She is doubtful of the lord's power throughout the movie, which everyone else seems to think is unfaltering (especially her husband). I think that this is how her relationship with God initially falls apart, and in turn, her marriage falls apart because her husband is the exact opposite and fully believes. In the Apostle, it is interesting when he yells at God, and that is considered okay. Something similar happens in Higher Ground when Ethan yells at Satan to "get out of this car". To me that definitely shows similarities in their two religious beliefs, but for grief I don't think it is the same at all. I think Higher Ground actually goes against the other movies we have watched in terms of grief. This is because I think Corrine really represses her grief for pretty much the entire movie, until finally in the end in her final speech, she kind of just lets it all out. I don't know why this is, but it's certainly different from the open grieving in, for example, Lars and the Real Girl. So yes, I think there was a pattern across these weeks, but this movie broke it.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Corrine gives up on organized religion. As her best friend is damaged for life by a brain tumor and her relationship with her husband falls apart, things seem to be more and more meaningless. However, throughout the film, the Church-people seem to preach the same things over and over. Even when her life is falling apart around her, they are talking about Christ’s divine love. Feeling a lack of this divine love, she falls out of stride with her Church. The members are not as divine and nice as she first suspected; when she stands up in church to speak her mind, she is chastised for “preaching.” The Church members start to seem like robots, meaninglessly repeating the same platitudes over and over. The Church remains still as her life changes, and she loses her ability to relate to the constant preaching which never delivers a yield. The praise of her old friends seems shallow and contradicts the sorrow in her own life, and she no longer feels like she ever had any reason to believe. Corrine makes a constant choice to turn away from the Church and make her own way in life. She decides to go “out with the dogs,” but this doesn’t represent a bad decision to her, only an alternative to religious life.
ReplyDeleteI think that the Corinne's quote about either being inside with you or outside with the dogs summarizes the attitude of the religious establishment she has grown so comfortable with. Bud's church, while pious, continually shows throughout the film that Bud's doctrine is unwilling to let women take an active role in the the church. In every lecture, she is urged that Satan and Evil lurk outside the confines of her defining institutions, marriage and the church. I think the film's final moment are a contradiction to what Corinne has been told throughout the entire film. Through the disintegration of her marriage and her crisis of faith, Corinne is shown that the "dogs" don't lurk outside waiting to snatch her up, rather the biggest demons that haunt her come from the places she least expects. Her husband becomes physically violent with her and she loses her best friend to a brain tumor. Corinne learns that being individual and independent does not mean accepting evil into her life; she can still be good and moral without the Church.
ReplyDeleteCorinne's time with the doctor summed up what her problem was with the church in their community and perhaps her decision in my opinion to go "out with the dogs". From the moment that the counselor confesses his religion, I got the feeling that things weren't going to go well. Corinne has been starting to have a breakdown in the beliefs that she has been do committed to for so long. Having the counselor trying to define her relationship with her husband through faith isn't going to help corinne at all. Not only was the man vague and simplistic describing only two options of either walking with the devil or with jesus and her husband, he was condescending as hell. Perhaps it's a better to be out with the dogs rather than. Looking deeper than only the two options the counselor gives, Corinne has taken a part that bypasses having to choose. She has renounced the belief system that held her captive to absolute choice and forged her own path.
ReplyDeleteAll the movies that we have watched that have grief as a theme focus on finding faith through losing or, in Higher Ground's case, almost losing something. In Higher Ground, the main character Corinne starts to believe in God after she screams his name to save her child. The child lives, and Corinne and her husband start to be very faithful to the lord. In Millions, Damian puts the majority of his faith into the saints hands, hoping his mother is a saint and one day he can be with her in heaven. Consistently, the grief and the loss that the character suffers is what guides them to a new path, a faithful path. In Gran Torino, Walt becomes a more open and caring person after his wife dies, especially towards the Lor family. In Lars and the Real Girl, the loss of Bianca leads Lars into starting a relationship with an actual person, and Lars becomes a very different person then he was in the beginning of the movie. In Higher Ground, Corinne doubts her faith because things are falling apart around her, and she can't feel any guidance or solace in God. Corinne seems at peace with her loss of faith at the end of the movie, and she seems to have new faith in herself.
ReplyDeleteQuestion One:
ReplyDeleteCorinne’s experience with the marriage counselor is not a pleasant one. Essentially he says that she must be a dutiful wife to get into heaven or dismiss all possibility of heaven. Corinne struggles with her faith throughout the movie, and with her role as a wife for almost as much. Towards the end of the movie, Corinne leaves her husband and the church behind her and is met by a bevy of dogs. However, as she leaves in the final shot she looks back at her church after kissing her husband, and the movie’s last shot is her framed in the door of the church. Corinne does not follow anything strictly, and this is highlighted in the ending. Throughout her life, we see her finding a happy medium where she is comfortable. This is true in her faith, when she loves the idea of speaking in tongues even if it is a sign of the devil, and her personal life, where she wears revealing clothes despite the austere examples set for her. At the end of the movie, Corinne finds another medium. She is content with the dogs, but she still professes her faith to the church. While she is uncomfortable being cast in one role, her open minds lets her embrace many outlooks. This is evident throughout the movie as we see in her various hairstyles and outfits. At the end of the movie, she shows her refusal to be stuck with the dogs or inside, but rather her need to forge her own path.
As we've seen in the previous films, grief allows the main characters to find a new path to follow in their lives. Walt's wife's death allows him to open up to the Lor family and lose his previous inhibitions. The death of Olivier's son is what drives him to get to know and take in Francis in order to find out why his son died. The reason that Damian was so devoted to doing good things and being so in touch with God in Millions was because he wanted to become a saint in heaven and be reunited with his mother. The grief that Corrine faces in this film is the death of her marriage and of her faith. She begins to face difficulties in her marriage and with her surrounding community around her. After she finally lets go of her religion and marriage, it seems like she is finally being a better person and, as Jenny said, has a newfound faith in herself.
ReplyDeleteGrief plays a huge role in Higher Ground because it both drives Corinne to religion and eventually pushes her away. In the beginning, the near death experience with her daughter in Ethan’s van causes Corinne to believe that a higher power had saved her daughters life. After this incident, both Corinne and Ethan became heavily immersed in religious events and start actively participating in the religious community. However, the grief Corinne feels after Annika is diagnosed with a brain tumor causes Corinne to question her faith and step back from the highly religious society she surrounds herself with. In the other films that we have watched, grief also plays a big part in causing faith (in a religious power or in something else) to develop within the characters. In the Gran Torino, Walt’s faith stems from the grief he felt after the Korean War. In Millions, the grief of losing his mom causes Damian to have faith in God and saints in order to believe that his mom is in Heaven. In Lars and the Real Girl, the death of Lars’ mom causes Lars to have faith in Bianca. In all of the films that we have watched, faith emerges from some sort of grief that the characters have experienced.
ReplyDelete3.I think that, wherever we look, grief impacts faith. Really, how could it not? If you are a believer and something terrible happens to you or someone you love, it seems fairly logical that you would question why God caused such a tragedy or allow it to happen. Sadness changes us, and, as a result, it also changes our faith. So, at the end of the day, Corinne asks herself, “Is my faith now the same faith I started out with?” In truth, it seems that her faith cannot be the same after all the different things she goes through in Higher Ground: her mother’s miscarriage and the resulting rift in her parents’ relationship, Annika’s illness, and the struggles she faces in her marriage with Ethan and with their church. Wherever there is sadness, there is a corresponding shift in faith. Sometimes grief manages to draw us closer to God and reinforce our faith. At other times, and in other situations, sadness causes a re-examination of belief that alienates us from the God we previously believed in. If one believes in an all-powerful God who controls everything that happens in the world, it makes sense that, when bad things happen to us, we wonder why God causes such pain for a believer. Faith is searching out an answer to these difficult questions.
ReplyDelete2)
ReplyDeleteSonny seems to have much more of a connection to God and seems to be able to communicate with God. Corinne, on the other hand, seems to be much more in questioning whether she is or is not talking to a God or anything like a God. She is able to loose her faith more easily then Sonny. Sonny is having a dialogue because even if he has to yell, God will her him and will do something, even if it seems unlikely. Corinne, however, wishes there is a God, but has a fear that God does not exist, or at least not to her.