Levin

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Marie Antoinette



Very aesthetic, stylish film.

It was interesting to get reeled into her world...lavish, full of sweets, diamonds, gardens...as she was a teenager when she became queen of France.

It was mentioned (here and there) in the film (within dialogue between Marie and her aristocrat friends) that France was suffering because of Marie's overly lavish lifestyle, and more so because Louis XVI, was advised to help America in their revolution, despite already being in great debt from previous wars.

"Many people began to see her as a clueless spendthrift who liked to play at being a shepherdess, whilst some of the real peasants lived in very hard conditions."

It was only at the end of the film that Marie finally encounters the peasants of France...as they are mobbing the palace...she comes out on the balcony...looking down onto them.

One must wonder if...Royalty (in any relative form) would function so lavishly, so blatantly narcissistic...if they (we) had to look down at the hungry peasants everyday.

"if not me, if not us, if not the church, then who"?

Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin knows something about this in "Anna Karenina". He owns land, has many peasant workers to work and harvest the land...but he decides it is valuable to work and harvest the land with them...finding afterwards that workers are content, and his profits increase.

His brother became a peasant, taking in a whore, and could not escape the comfort of Vodka...but Levin went to visit, invited him in his home, accepted his wife, encountered his brother's frustration, and went to him as he died. So while Anna, Vronsky, Karenin, and others are despairing in their inner struggles to be free and "happy"...Levin (Tolstoy) understands and sees the gospel very clearly...for he has encountered the peasants...he has loved them...he has touched them.

"Then we met big mamma and sat with her on her cement bed."

Cory A. Booker is the mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

"Since 1998, he has lived in Brick Towers, a notorious public housing project in Newark's Central Ward. Booker organized tenants there to fight for improved conditions."

He still lives there.

Encountering the poor, living with the poor, becoming poor, hugging the poor, suffering with the poor...this does not allow for the folly of arguing how to be the best stewards of our money...this does not allow for the folly of deciding which negative campaign ad is the best one to vote for...this does not allow for the folly of deciding whether this church or community is "right for me"...because poverty is simply about true dependence on each other and God.



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