An Odd Concurrence of Events: The Shocking Tale of Three New Releases

Introduction

What you are about to read, if you dare, began as an average-length film-blog post I called “A Tale of Two Films”. It was primarily a review of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and started with the words “In an odd concurrence of events”. But as if writing those words possessed magical power, I immediately encountered more such events and then more and more. Day after day, sometimes hour after hour, what I call the Mystical Flow (God?) confronted me with one wild coincidence after another, all related to precisely what I was writing on that day. By the end, I was in a state of shock (in a good way). And my average-length post had become a dissertation (sorry). [If you prefer to limit your reading to the part that focuses on the three films, it’s safe to stop reading after the section entitled Interconnectedness and Walt Whitman]

It all started with that punch-in-the-gut that convinced me I needed to watch The Life of Chuck on opening day despite knowing nothing about it (see my previous post). 

… But no, I must allow this post to begin with what I wrote so many wild days (weeks) ago:

The Tale Begins

In an odd concurrence of events, I somehow found myself watching three new-release films twice each (the second time in reverse order) during the month of June. Watching even one new release twice is a rarity; three films in a single year has never happened before and is especially odd given how few films I’ve watched in the theatre in 2025. I couldn’t help feeling that some meaning must lie behind this unique set of events, something that connects the three films to each other and maybe even to my life. With confirmation bias firmly in place, it wasn’t difficult to discover such a possible meaning. But I had no idea what I was getting myself into. 

[Note: There are a few minor spoilers below.]

Final Reckoning

It began in Winnipeg, where I took advantage of the local IMAX theatre to watch Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning the way it was meant to be seen. I was a big fan of the Mission: Impossible TV series back in the 60’s and early 70’s and I enjoyed Brian de Palma’s MI film in 1996. Subsequent films focused much more on action than story, though I always found them enjoyable (for action films). But Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), despite being written and directed by the same person (Christopher McQuarrie) who had made the previous two ‘action-only’ (IMO) films, which were among my least favourite of the series, caught my attention, becoming my favourite of the seven Mission: Impossible films to date. So I needed to watch the sequel. I wasn’t disappointed.

Sure, Final Reckoning once again fills most of its almost-three-hour length with action (albeit more entertaining/suspenseful action than most), and the long plane scene near the end is, IMO, completely unnecessary, especially as the violent end to that scene undermines some of what’s special about this film, but the fact remains that there IS something special about the film and that’s why I need to write about it. Before I do that, I will note that the acting in this film is excellent throughout, as is the cinematography, the score, the editing and the pacing. 

But Final Reckoning is special because of the multiple attempts to deliver life-affirming messages in a film about the possible end to all life on earth. This is a serious and intense film - much more so than the previous MI films. And the ultimate villain is not some typical megalomaniacal baddie but an AI determined to wipe out all human life. While such an entity may be science fiction (for now), the message is clear: we need to be cautious about our technological advances (and about the people we elect as president). The film also makes it clear that the world’s nuclear weapons are an ongoing threat which should long ago have been phased out of existence (if humanity was capable of acting rationally). Final Reckoning even suggests that the path toward nuclear disarmament and making the world a safer place may require the courage of powerful leaders taking the step to disarm unilaterally rather than waiting for global wisdom to end the insanity. Indeed, being willing to sacrifice oneself and even one’s country to achieve a better world (instead of fighting endless wars) may be the film’s central message - astonishing for a film made with US military support. All of this was unexpected and blew me away, but the best was yet to come, with an ending that focuses on a speech by Luther (Ving Rhames), one of Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) colleagues (the relationships between those colleagues, and others, in the film is also quite special). I quote part of Luther’s speech below:

“Like it or not, we are masters of our fate. Nothing is written. And our cause, however righteous, pales in comparison to the impact of our effect. Any hope for a better future comes from willing that future into being. A future reflecting the measure of good within ourselves. And all that is good inside us is measured by the good we do for others. We all share the same fate - the same future. The sum of our infinite choices. One such future is built on kindness, trust and mutual understanding, should we choose to accept it. Driving without question to a light we cannot see. Not just for those we hold close, but for those we’ll never meet.” 

Amazing! Mind-blowing! Despite all of the redemptive violence found in the eight MI films, I was left in awe, not least because Final Reckoning is a blockbuster seen by millions of people around the world. How many of those people saw and heard the messages I have described? I would like to be optimistic, but when I started reading the reviews of the film (I read at least ten of them), I was shocked by how little mention was made of ANY of this, as if these messages had nothing to do with a critique of the film. I really miss Roger Ebert!

The Phoenician Scheme

Let’s move along to the second new release I watched in June: Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme. Like all of Anderson’s films, The Phoenician Scheme is a quirky comedy-drama that requires multiple viewings to fully appreciate. It tells the story of a ruthless businessman who survives regular attempts to assassinate him and finally decides it’s time to think about what will happen to his business empire if he dies. Leaving everything to his daughter, a nun, seems like a good idea, hinting perhaps that he wants some good to come out of his evil life, but his daughter is understandably unimpressed by her father’s use of slave labour and willingness to cause a famine if it helps his business schemes. 

I won’t say more about the plot. Instead, I will highlight the fact that, like Final Reckoning, The Phoenician Scheme contains a number of messages, suggesting that wealth and power, and the ruthless pursuit thereof, are anything but a path to happiness. What matters in life are relationships, helping those in need and making the world a better place. The film is full of religious themes and the case could also be made that it draws a connection between between religious faith and doing good. 

The Phoenician Scheme is another very entertaining, intelligent and rewarding Anderson film (especially upon a second viewing), with gorgeous cinematography, excellent acting and endlessly clever writing. It’s harder to identify and appreciate the many positive messages within a quirky dark-comedy framework but in my opinion they are critical to the overall quality of the film (as in MI-FR).

The Life of Chuck

Finally, we come to my favourite film of the year (so far): The Life of Chuck, about which I have already written, though I revealed nothing about the film’s plot. I will say a little more now (very minor spoilers), though I doubt if many readers have been able to watch the film, since most theatres only played it for a week or two. Given the cult-classic status of Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, two other films based on Stephen King novellas, perhaps that status also lies ahead for Mike Flanagan’s brilliant film. 

The Life of Chuck has three ‘acts’, each of which tells its own story (about the life of Chuck) while also sharing certain themes with the other two acts. One of those themes is death and another is life: how do we approach each moment of our lives knowing that we will die? We all know that our lives will end and that this end could come unexpectedly and yet we live as if we have all the time in the world to do the vital things we think we should do, like spending more time with our children, helping to make the world a better place … or dancing. I’m not talking about living each moment as if it may be our last, but about living as if each moment is precious and an opportunity to connect with others (like the man who just told me how upset he was about losing a vital part of his fishing gear and how happy he was to come back just now and find it - and to have someone nearby with whom he could share his joy). [That’s not really a wild coincidence, but what happened a couple of hours later seemed like one: I read a blog post by my film critic friend Gareth Higgins just hours after writing this paragraph and in it he writes: “Don’t treat each day as if it were your last, but as if you were seeing things for the first time.” I encourage you to read his inspiring post, which I shared on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/vic.thiessen.2025/]

Interconnectedness and Walt Whitman

The Life of Chuck opens with a quote from Walt Whitman’s brilliant poem, “Song of Myself” (written in 1855). The key line, which is repeated later in the film [and is also a key line in Dead Poet’s Society (1989)], is “I am large, I contain multitudes.” This line is explained by a teacher as alluding to the way all of our experiences and everyone we meet is contained within our minds and part of who we are. “Song of Myself’ is a long poem about (among other things) the interconnectedness of all people and all things, of all life and of all of our lives. This is a subject that has preoccupied me for four decades and has been central (for about twenty years now) to how I have come to view God (the Mystical Flow) and the world around me (more on this in the next section).

In The Life of Chuck, this theme is played out in two ways: 1) Recognizing how our lives are interconnected impacts the way we interact with others and the world today; and 2) The past and the future play critical roles in these interactions - memories of all those moments that have made us who we are (the multitudes) lead us to the present moment, a moment that may require us to take risks on the way to our possible futures. I am reminded of another great film about the interconnectedness within each of us and our possible futures - Everything Everywhere All at Once (my favourite film of 2022). And here is a direct quote from my 2022 film-class notes about my second-favourite film of that year, yet another bit of serendipity: “After Yang connects its protagonists to glimpses of their lives in the past, encouraging us to remain connected to our memories and appreciate the life we see around us at any given moment.” 

Interconnectedness is not a new concept. For centuries it has been a central tenet of Indigenous spirituality. Chief Seattle, a contemporary of Whitman, spoke the following words in a speech he made around the same time Whitman wrote “Song of Myself”: “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” A much newer term (1980s?) is that of ‘interbeing’ a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh to convey “the notion that all things exist in a state of interconnected being, a state of being interwoven and mutually dependent.” 

Interbeing was the subject of a talk in our church last Sunday (given by Rachael, one of our church leaders), shortly after I had written my first draft of this section of my post (i.e. another wild coincidence). Rachael focused on Charles Eisenstein’s “Story of Interbeing” - a new story for a time in which the old story (The Story of Separation) no longer functions well [another coincidence: Gareth’s post, mentioned above, is also about telling a new story for our time]. Eisenstein, like Whitman, Seattle and Thich Nhat Hanh, talks about interconnectedness and the web of life, about how our wellbeing is connected with the wellbeing of all others, about how violence we create in other countries is mirrored in violence at home, and how treating others well benefits us. Rachael also spoke about the recent deaths of two poets: Andrea Gibson and Joanna Macy. When my household discussed Rachael’s talk on Monday, Dead Poet’s Society came up (just hours after I had included Dead Poet’s Society’s mention of “I contain multitudes” in my draft), thus linking this discussion to The Life of Chuck. And on it goes.

I believe that a ‘deep dive’ into Final Reckoning would uncover the theme of interbeing that we find in The Life of Chuck (and even in The Phoenician Scheme). All three films point to a world full of connections in which each person has the potential to choose love and to help make a positive change in the world. National leaders who mistreat their own citizens or mistreat the people in their lands whom they consider second-class citizens or ignore the needs of the world around them or fight wars in other lands or exploit people (or the planet) in other lands will suffer the consequences of their actions because they can’t separate themselves from others the way they think they can. Luther’s quote in Final Reckoning would feel at home in both The Life of Chuck and The Phoenician Scheme. That is the remarkable meaning I discovered behind my film-viewing in June.

Vic’s Multitudes

And how does that meaning impact (‘connect to’) my life? 

The answer to that question lies in my own history with the subject of interconnectedness. I first used the word in a sermon I preached twenty years ago. A few years later I encountered the writings of Grace Jantzen and Dorothee Soelle, two feminist theologians who had a major influence on my theology. In Violence to Eternity, Jantzen wrote “Flourishing takes place in the context of an interconnected web of life.” Soelle describes God as ‘connected to every aspect of life in the world, not in the form of commands or control but in the form of the very interdependent web of life through which all of creation is connected. Thus religious experience is about our connectedness to the very ground of our existence, our relationship with God who is bound into the web of life, connecting us to every living thing on this planet and to the planet itself.’ 

As Soelle suggests, I believe God resides within every human being and every living thing and that we are all thus connected to every person and every living thing and to the planet itself. As Eisenstein says, how we interact with every person and thing has consequences for us. Depending on that interaction, the results may benefit us or haunt us. But those who perpetrate mass murders (e.g. the genocide in Gaza) or mass injustices are also part of God and part of us. So while great anger is a justifiable response to the horrific life-destroying criminal actions of men like Netanyahu, Putin and Trump, I believe we must be careful not to follow their dehumanizing behaviour by dehumanizing them. For me, that means not calling them names of any kind or speaking about them in vulgar terms. 

If everyone on the planet, and the planet itself, is connected to us, how can we experience any joy in our lives when so many people (e.g. Palestinians) and the planet itself are suffering? This is a profound question that requires more than a one-paragraph response. Possible responses would include doing what we can to help alleviate that suffering, whether it’s advocating for the trans people and immigrants and Indigenous peoples and unhoused people and other marginalized people in our communities, or exposing and challenging the powers-that-be who perpetrate their various crimes around the world. The Life of Chuck encourages us to find moments of joy in the midst of this troubled world and surely that is necessary if we are to be agents of transformation. I wrote this last sentence the day before Rachael’s talk, which included words from Joanna Macy, a Buddhist poet who said: “I personally feel incredibly grateful to be alive in this moment and to have lived this long that I can take part in this immense possibility of transformation of our life on Earth from a killing society to a radiant renewing society.”

Before I conclude with some final words about the power of film, I want to share the closing paragraph to a sermon I preached in 2019, a paragraph that I felt summarized all of the 200+ sermons I had preached in my life: “God is that serendipitous creative force of unconditional love and compassion that connects us to each other and to all life on this planet through the Spirit within us. Loving ourselves, loving our neighbours and loving God are one and the same thing and represent the central and orienting invitation and purpose of our existence. God uses this shared powerless love to guide humanity to the ultimate goal of flourishing, of shalom. Coincidences tap us into the connections between us and the Spirit and our billions of sisters and brothers around the world, providing opportunities every day of our lives for us to stand against the Domination System and help the world to flourish.”

With all of this as a background to some of the multitudes I contain, I return to the question of what my unique experience of film-watching in June may be saying to me. I have been lecturing for decades on the power of film in our world today. That power can be negative (e.g. promoting the myth of redemptive violence or dehumanization) or it can be positive (providing countless stories to help us understand each other and connect with each other and help make the world a better place). Even blockbusters, like this year’s Final Reckoning and Superman, can offer a way forward in this troubled world. My unique film-watching in June caused me to spend weeks writing this post (‘dissertation’) and has encouraged me in the process to begin writing more posts on our film blog, with the intent of highlighting films which may contribute in some way to Macy’s “radiant renewing society.”   

I had ended my thoughts there, but of course I had no sooner done so when I received an email from Gareth (the latest issue of The Porch) that ended with the following: “For now, I want to close by remembering Joanna Macy, who died this week at 96 years old. Read her books Coming Back to Life and Active Hope, and let your inarticulate rage about the broken world find its way toward the kind of lament and grief that doesn’t destroy you, doesn’t fuel hatred of or mere opposition to other people, but toward a life of fierce and tender creativity held in the exquisite, endless, evolving web of interbeing. It won’t end suffering (at least not yet), but it will help enable the suffering you feel about the wider suffering of the world to be something more than a wound in you. It can help the wound become a scar, and then a medicine story.”                      

Wow!