Madeleine L’Engle

  • The Science Fiction Makers (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) As a Science Fiction critic on a decade-long hiatus, I haven’t given up my chops when it comes to commenting on histories of the genre. As a result, my expectations ran low for The Science Fiction Makers, a documentary examining the life, works and influences of three less-than-famous writers who contributed to the marginal Christian Science Fiction subgenre: Victor Rousseau Emanuel, C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle. The film is a follow-up to writer-director Andrew Wall’s previous The Fantasy Makers (which I really have to see now), which studied C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and George MacDonald as the first part of the “Faith in Imagination” trilogy. To lay my cards on the table right away, I had two major objections to the very premise of The Science Fiction Makers: First, a knowledge of the field of written SF that usually has me bemoaning superficial takes on the genre, and secondly a suspicion toward “Christian SF” that owes more to the American Evangelical Right having co-opted the label. (i.e.: Think Left Behind and then stop thinking.)  But The Science Fiction Makers easily met, then defeated my preconceptions: By focusing on writers from previous generations, it’s a documentary that avoids the charged political nature of more contemporary examples, and can see its writers’ careers in their totality. It’s also, to put it simply, a film that knows its stuff and digs deep into its topic matter. I’m reasonably familiar with Lewis and L’Engle, less so with Rousseau, but I was impressed by the way The Science Fiction Makers fit into my understanding of the genre, expanding into what I did not know. It’s also a documentary that resists grandiose claims that so often come with niche topics: Wall here correctly defines his areas of interest, carefully explains how it fits within a bigger scope and then thoroughly explores it. The film illustrates scenes from the life of its three subjects through dramatic re-enactment, but the meat is found in the analysis that accompanies the visuals. The interviews are interesting, and they propose the subgenre as being of spiritual interest more than a political persuasion—again sidestepping some of the most common objections that seasoned SF fans (by and large a non-religious—albeit often spiritual—bunch) may have about the topic of the film. In other words, I’m favourably impressed by The Science Fiction Makers, and I don’t make the claim lightly: I have seen a good chunk of the SF documentaries about Science Fiction writers, have shelves of SF criticism books and have written hundreds of thousands of words on the topic. This documentary is deeper and more thorough than many written pieces, and it even made me feel warm and sympathetic toward Madeleine L’Engle’s work, too often dismissed by readers outside her intended public. I have no problems recommending The Science Fiction Makers to hardcore SF fans and critics—it should especially be of interest to the tough IAFA/ICFA crowd. I’m really looking forward to the third instalment of Wall’s “Faith in Imagination” trilogy.

  • A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

    A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2020) There are many ways in which A Wrinkle in Time irritates me. It starts, clearly, with not being part of its target audience. This is a film clearly designed to appeal to teenage girls, a group of which I’ve never been part of. But it’s also self-consciously a fantasy film dressed in science-fiction garb, and I’m of the film belief that you have to play by the rules of SF if you’re hanging in its playground. But it doesn’t—by going for science-fantasy babble ever chance it gets. When the film features people scoffing at the protagonist’s theories, it wants me to feel sorry for them, but I’m rather there thinking, “No, this is actually stupid.” (One notes that the original classic YA novel by Madeleine L’Engle had pretty much the same issues, if not worse.) The dialogue can be overly precious at times, the rhythm of the film is very uneven and even the villains can be cartoonish. Despite basic technobabble about quantum entanglement and such, the film really is a fantasy in which a girl travels to the dark kingdom to rescue a loved one. The mismatch between my expectation of the form and the way it’s executed would normally be enough to put me off the result with a broken suspension of disbelief. In many ways, A Wrinkle in Time feels a lot like the similarly disappointing Tomorrowland, leading me to think that they may be something stupid in the water at Disney Studios. But here’s the thing: Despite all of this, I still have quite a bit of affection for the result. Everything else about A Wrinkle in Time is quite likable. I like Storm Reid as the protagonist, and I think we should make many more movies for young girls. I absolutely enjoyed the casting—if going on a death-defying adventure means having Oprah Whitney, Mandy Kaling and Reese Witherspoon as guardian angels, then sign me up. (Witherspoon gets the chance to be very funny along the way.) Even the supporting actors include likable choices such as Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Peña, Zach Galifianakis and Chris Pine. This is definitely the father in myself speaking, but I really liked the overall message of girl empowerment and positive depiction of father/daughter relationships. The ending wraps things up satisfyingly, and director Ava Duvernay clearly shows a mastery of her craft every step of the way. The now de-rigueur wall-to-wall use of colourful CGI leads to spectacular visuals and, as much as we can use this qualifier on a $100M Disney production, the film does seem to have some earnestness to it. It’s true that I wanted to like the film more than I did. On the other hand, A Wrinkle in Time did manage to keep my sympathy despite flaws that would have destroyed most movies with the very same issues. I strongly suspect that a better film would have moved even farther away from the original L’Engle novel, prompting calls as to why it was even an adaptation.