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Related: About this forumScreening Room: "Bacon & God's Wrath"
By Joshua Rothman , JUNE 14, 2016
Razie, the subject of Sol Friedmans documentary Bacon & Gods Wrath, is a Jewish woman whos about to turn ninety. She has also recently become an atheist and is about to try bacon for the first time. From that simple setup, surprises flow. Lying on a couch, like one of Freuds analysands, Razie tells us about her strictly religious upbringing, which seems to have brought her little joy. As she describes how using the Internet led her to atheism (Some of my most intimate thoughts and questions . . . were so common that the Google could anticipate it!), a picture of her wry, inquisitive, unsentimental mind emerges. Something is at stake in her decision to try bacon: its a way of marking a transformationof asserting that, even late in life, its possible to change. Its also, one senses, a way of claiming independence from the fear of death that can haunt old age.
With its unbalanced nouns in apposition, the films title hints at the absurdity of the way human beings think. Theres something comic about linking bacon with the wrath of God: the film, recognizing this, includes whimsical animations. Yet the title also contains, at least for me, a hint of sadness. Religious faith is a consolation; if you trade it in for bacon, have you made a good trade? Im an atheist, and I think I would give up bacon in exchange for the conviction that the universe has a purpose. By the same token, faith becomes vulnerable to skepticism when it links itself to more or less arbitrary decisions about diet or dress. Razie, of course, hasnt traded belief for bacon; she has traded it for the freedom to follow her own conscience, to do and think as she sees fit. These, the film seems to say, are the signs by which we communicate, to others and ourselves, our ideas about the fundamental questions of existence. Look how small they are!
Razie reminds me of my own Jewish grandmother. They share a way of talking, an unpretentious intellectualism, andjudging from the art works and tchotchkes in Razies apartmentan aesthetic. My grandmother is ninety-three and, to my knowledge, has never kept kosher. Ive never asked her about her views on religion. Now that Ive watched Bacon & Gods Wrath, I will.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/screening-room-bacon-gods-wrath
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Screening Room: "Bacon & God's Wrath" (Original Post)
rug
Jun 2016
OP
Jim__
(14,096 posts)1. Razie seems to repeat things she's heard on the internet word for word.
The film would be more impressive if she'd spoken her own thoughts. I realize she's 90; but if she can't express her own thoughts, I'm not sure what we learn about her.
rug
(82,333 posts)2. I agree. Her own life experiences would be interesting to hear
But changing one's life views based on reading the internet . . . .