Undoctrinate

[From May 2010 intro]
UNDoctrinate is a brilliant short film that has Fury and delivers Mystery. Mystery is no mean feat, especially in this day and age. This film is like a severe European art film, like a Haneke (The White Ribbon) or Dumont (Twentynine Palms). It has an imaginative soundtrack, some razor-sharp editing, and only one word (apart from the title) – but what a word, and, never let it be said that there is no difference between upper and lower case letters!

[Baha'i] Undoctrinate illuminates two truths about a life of faith.  First, those of us seeking nearness to God must eschew blind imitation of past traditions.  We must be especially wary of any tradition that emphasises adherence to doctrine over creating authentic bonds of human fellowship.  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, a central figure of the Bahá'í Faith, analyses the dynamics of blind imitation this way:

In past centuries the nations of the world have imagined that the law of God demanded blind imitation of ancestral forms of belief and worship....
At the same time the basic foundation of the religion of God, which was ever the principle of love, unity and the fellowship of humanity, has been forsaken and cast aside, each religious system holding tenaciously to imitations of ancestral forms as the supreme essential.  Therefore, hatred and hostility have appeared in the world instead of the divine fruitage of unity and love.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá contrasts this pattern of past centuries with modern times in which “it has come to pass that we are renouncing all that savors of blind imitation, and impartially and independently investigating truth.”  Such investigation leads us to see that it is possible to exchange G-d for God without sacrificing our faith.

Undoctrinate goes further than this, though, to exchange God with god. This second exchange, in my reading, illuminates a second truth: as an alternative to blind imitation, the blind questioning of all authority often supplants the impartial investigation of truth.  Such blind questioning does not seek answers and, in forgoing a focus on truth, undermines the foundations of human happiness.  God becomes god all too easily in modern times; He even dies.

Bahá'u'lláh, the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá'í Faith, voicing the call of God to humanity, explains this dynamic in a metaphor apt for the anonymous axe-wielder in Undoctrinate: “O MOVING FORM OF DUST!  I desire communion with thee, but thou wouldst put no trust in Me.  The sword of thy rebellion hath felled the tree of thy hope.”

In my experience, a life of faith demands that we avoid both the extreme of blind imitation and the extreme of blind questioning.  We must live in the tension generated by a relentless posing of questions in a relentless search after truth.  In that tension, we find new ways to embody “the basic foundation of the religion of God, which was ever the principle of love, unity and the fellowship of humanity.”

[Undoctrinate] I simply loved this very simple, very short film. An axeman is chopping away at a tree while the "G" in "God" is erased and replaced with a "g". Thus The Sovereign, Creator "God" becomes just one "god" amongst many.

I have been thinking and writing a lot about Christianity and religious freedom in the West lately, and so I recognise that this short film, whilst tiny, is HUGE. Who is the axeman? Does he represent the social engineers chipping away at our Judean-Christian heritage and culture? Will he "remodel" the tree, i.e. whittle it into another shape or will he cut it down? What will the "post-Christian" West look like? What sort of fruit will it produce?
OR
Is the axeman the Lord (Luke 3:7-9)? Is the Lord cutting down the tree that, after being blessed, rejected God, embraced wealth, militarism, idolatry and self-sufficiency and ceased to bear good fruit?

Is the "UN" in "UNDoctrinate" significant? The UN (United Nations) was founded on Biblical, Judeo-Christian principles but is now dominated by rogue states striking hard at our freedoms -- specifically our religious freedom. What does it mean to change "God" into "god"? What can be the consequences of such a shift? Disaster? Judgement?

This film lasts seventy-seven seconds but opens doors for deep, significant, challenging discussions and contemplations that could last a very long time indeed. Brilliant!

[Undoctrinate] “Short” is not a strong enough term to describe the blip of two images that weirdly are what I remember best of all five films I saw here. However, the image of a man hacking away inadequately at an imposingly large tree and the word representing “God” gradually becoming more familiarized by filling in a gap and de-capitalising the G teased me for quite a while. How much do we hack away at our idea of God, trying to make God more accessible, less mysterious, more containable? That man with his little axe it seems will never conquer the tree, and has no strategy for the time it ever comes crashing down.

Rather than trying to reduce the tree to woodchips, what would happen if the man decided to sit in its shade and listen to the birds that find refuge in the branches? It seems a much less futile, more gentle way of finding out more about the tree.

Similarly, even though I have loved academic theological study, the best way I have found to connect to God is to stop my deconstructive efforts for long enough to quietly sit and observe and hear from those who have genuine encounters of grace.

What if we took the gentler way?

A man hacks purposefully and methodically at a large tree in a forest; a hand writes, erases and rewrites various versions of a single word on a lined page.

I was drawn to Undoctrinate because it stayed with me for some time after the first viewing – mainly because the director uses the medium thoughtfully and confidently, and approaches his subject from an intriguing oblique angle. The film is neither ham-fistedly didactic nor simplistic – two elements that tend all too frequently to undermine (if not thoroughly deaden) cinema with ‘spiritual’ content or thematic focus. In short, it’s an engaging experimental journey through spiritual quandary and frustration, and an accomplished piece of filmmaking.