Ali Faulkner | Through the Shattered Lens

2014’s The Song tells the story of Jed King (Alan Powell).

Jed is a singer-songwriter. He is also the son of David King, a country-western superstar who drank too much, smoked too much, and had an extramarital affair with Jed’s mother. (He initially spotted her while she was bathing in a lake.) After her then-husband killed himself, Jed’s mother married David but their marriage was fraught with difficulty. Jed grew up in a conflicted household. After his father died, Jed found himself expected to carry on in David’s name. Try as he might, he found himself permanent overshadowed by the legacy of David King.

(If all this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a country-western version of the story of King David, Bathsheba, and Solomon.)

While performing at a wine festival, Jed meets and falls in love with Rose Jordan (Ali Faulkner). They marry and start a family. Jed writes a song about Rose and it becomes his first legitimate hit. Years later, Jed is a superstar, touring while his wife raises their son. It’s an arrangement that seems to work fine until Jed meets his new opening act, fiddler Shelby Bale (Caitlin Nichol-Thomas).

Soon, in the tradition of Johnny Cash, Jed King is drinking too much and popping pills and losing his way on the road. He comes home only briefly and Rose starts to feel as if the only reason he even bothers is so he can have sex. Jed’s life is soon falling apart….

The Song is based on Song of Songs and the story of King Solomon and, to give credit where credit is due, the film is actually pretty clever in the way it updates the story. If you know the story, it makes sense that David and Jed King would both be musicians. King David spying Bathsheba in her bath becomes David King spying Bathsheba in a lake. Naamah, the only one of Solomon’s wives to be named, becomes Rose Jordan. (Naamah was said to be from what is now Jordan.) The Queen of Sheba, who tempted Solomon into sin and paganism, becomes Shelby Bale. David and Solomon were rules. David King and his son Jed are celebrities and really, there’s not that much difference nowadays. The film’s dialogue and especially Jed’s thoughts (heard in voice over) are largely borrowed from Song of Songs and again, the film actually does a good job of modernizing them without getting away from the main theme. This is one of the rare faith-based films that’s not only willing to frankly discuss sex but which also acknowledges that sexual desire is a normal thing and nothing to be ashamed of. There’s a maturity to this film that you don’t often find in the faith-based genre.

As you can probably guess, I really like The Song. It’s well-acted, well-directed, and the film looks great. It might some like faint praise to say that The Song looked like a real movie but, again, that’s an accomplishment for this particular genre. Alan Powell and Ali Faulkner had wonderful romantic chemistry. That said, my favorite performance came from Caitlin Nichol-Thomas, who turned Shelby Bale into a true force of chaos. The Song remains a favorite of mine.

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by Wednesday, November 30th! Will she make it? Keep checking the site to find out!)

Maggie’s Passage is a film that I recorded off of Channel 58 on November 13th. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, Channel 58 specializes in showing faith-based programming. (Channel 58 previously aired both Island of Grace and The Encounter. Right now, they appear to be in the middle of doing a Left Behind marathon. If you’re reading this, Kirk Cameron, the check is presumably in the mail.)

The main reason that I recorded Maggie’s Passage is because it was filmed down here in Dallas. As opposed to my friends who live in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, it’s rare that I actually get to see my hometown onscreen. I mean, sure, countless episodes of Cheaters have been filmed in Dallas but, for the most part, most movies about Dallas are actually filmed in Louisiana. Even Dallas Buyers Club was actually shot in New Orleans!

(Incidentally, New Orleans looks nothing like Dallas.)

Originally released in 2009, Maggie’s Passage was directed by Mike Norris. Mike is the son of Chuck Norris. This led me to suspect that Chuck would make a cameo appearance at some point, perhaps standing outside of Club Dada or taking a selfie in front of the Big Red Courthouse. But no, Chuck never shows up. Instead, Maggie’s Passage is about a teenage girl named Maggie (Ali Faulkner). When she was little, Maggie was adopted by Jenny (Janine Turner) and her husband. After her stepfather dies, Maggie runs away from home and tracks down her birth mother. After discovering that her birth mother wants nothing to do with her, Maggie ends up working on Harry Hines Blvd. for an abusive pimp. When she finally escapes, Maggie is taken in by Grace (Sheran Goodspeed Keyton) and a group of extremely religious homeless people. In almost any other film (like in Split Image, which was also filmed in Dallas), this would lead to Maggie becoming a part of a cult but, since this film was airing on Channel 58, it instead leads to a lot of talk about lost faith, redemption, and prayer.

I had mixed feelings about Maggie’s Passage. There were certain scenes, especially at the start of the film, that brought back some definite memories of being a rebellious, scared, and out-of-control 16 year-old. When Maggie was wandering down the street with the Dallas skyline behind her, I definitely cringed a little because I not only knew the location but I knew the feeling as well. In those early scenes, I sat there and I thought about how, if not for a few strokes of luck, I could have easily been Maggie. Ali Faulkner is definitely a better actress than you typically expect to find in a low-budget faith-based film and Mike Norris knows how to tell a story cinematically. Even though I knew it was a religious film, the first half of Maggie’s Passage never felt preachy…

Add to that, there was a scene where Maggie was walking along this bridge! This photo, by the way, was taken by our own Dazzling Erin Nicole!

But then Maggie met those homeless people and the whole movie went downhill. Movies always tend to idealize the homeless and their living conditions (which, incidentally, does a great disservice to those who actually are homeless and who are too busy trying not to die to spend all of their time sharing their faith-based wisdom with every runaway white teenager who they happen to come across) and Maggie’s Passage took this tendency to the extreme. Whenever I saw those good-hearted, enlightened, cheerful, and rather clean-cut homeless people talking to Maggie about what St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, I found myself thinking about the guy who I always see defecating in front of the Frank Crowley Courthouse. Or maybe the old woman who used to always approach me at Mockingbird Station, rambling about how the Vatican put a tracking device in her forehead. Or maybe the guy who I saw camped out behind a Wal-Mart in Oak Cliff, struggling to sit up straight and surrounded by empty beer bottles. These are people who really need our help and movies that sentimentalize their existence or portray them as being magical caregivers don’t do them any good. In the end, Maggie may find God but the homeless are still living on the streets and the film doesn’t seem to see that as being a problem.

That said, I still appreciated seeing Reunion Tower on film.