Joy on the Journey: Chasing Sehnsucht in Zhao’s Nomadland

“Home, is it just a word? Or is it something you carry within you?”

In the opening minutes of Chloe Zhao’s film Nomadland, we see these words inked on the arm of an Amazon employee named Angela, who is showing off tattoos to her new friend, Fern. It’s a quick scene that may not seem particularly noteworthy, however, nothing in this movie is extraneous or insignificant. The words of this tattoo present us with both a portent of what’s to come and the central tension of the entire film.

Mashed Potatoes & Visions

In the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there is a scene where Rory Neary cries into his mashed potatoes. He, along with several other people, have had an encounter with an extra terrestrial that has implanted a shared vision in their consciousness. The thing is, he’s not sure what the image from the vision is. He’s been trying to replicate it with anything he can find. He sees the shadow of it in pillow cases and shaving cream, but when he tries to form it, it’s just not right. As he shovels mashed potatoes onto his plate and begins to try to sculpt them into the image, his family looks on in horror. He starts crying, and then his son starts crying. Throughout the film he defends his odd behavior, saying “this means something”—even though he doesn’t know what.

Encanto and the Miracle of Empathy

One of the reasons I love fantasy as a genre is because of the inclusion of magic. In fantasy stories—the good ones anyway—magic can reveal the spiritual realities that we all sense in life but can’t see, and have no material frame to express.

Stuff We Liked in 2021

No matter what your 2021 held, you were no doubt helped along by some comforting art, music, and story. You might have discovered an album that seemed to name precisely your own emotional landscape; perhaps you stumbled on a book that you could count on as an escape in the silent hours of the night; or maybe it was a TV show that kept you hooked from its pilot to its finale. Whatever it was, we want to hear about it! So please share in the comments section below. In the meantime, we’ve got some excellent recommendations from the Rabbit Room’s staff and blog contributors to get the conversation started.

The Violent Grace of The Green Knight

Author’s note: This essay contains spoilers for the 14th century British poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the 2021 film The Green Knight. If I spoil the poem for you, well, your bad, you’ve had six centuries to catch up. However, spoiling the film for you would be more understandable, so perhaps steer clear until you’ve seen it.

The Resistance: Emile Mosseri

[Editor’s note: As a companion piece to Jennifer Trafton’s essay this morning on the magic of Mary Poppins, here’s a conversation about the craft of scoring films with Emile Mosseri, known most recently for his work on Minari and The Last Black Man in San Francisco.]

Born to Fly: Mary Poppins, Bruce Springsteen, and the Spell of Immortality

[Editor’s note: Our theme for this last day of North Wind Manor’s Opening Week is film, and this evening we’ll be enjoying a private screening of one of our favorite recent films. Here’s one of the most well-loved pieces from the past few years on the blog that engages with the craft of film: an essay by Jennifer Trafton on the mythologies of Mary Poppins and Bruce Springsteen and what they can teach us about freedom, imagination, and the human longing to reclaim playfulness.]

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Opening Week at North Wind Manor: Online Offerings

Next week is a big week for us at the Rabbit Room. After several years of fundraising, renovating, and patiently waiting, we are finally ready to open wide the doors to our newly-restored community space, North Wind Manor! Every day next week, the Manor will serve as a venue for events centered around art, music, story, and community. But for those of us who are unable to attend in person, we have exciting plans for online content as well.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hopeful Grief

*The following contains spoilers for In the Heights and Hamilton. 

I’ve been listening to the In the Heights soundtrack for five days straight. I went to see the movie last week with no knowledge of the story or songs. I hadn’t been to a movie in seventeen months. I ordered popcorn and a milkshake and settled in to watch the movie I’d seen more than one reviewer call the perfect return to theaters. It was, and I commend it to you (on the big screen if you’re comfortable going), but this is not a movie review.

Announcing Opening Week at North Wind Manor

We are so excited to announce Opening Week at North Wind Manor: a 4-day celebration (July 13th-16th) of the Rabbit Room’s newly rebuilt community space through story, music, art, and community. It’s just the beginning of what we hope will be a continual calendar of events aimed at nourishing Christ-centered communities for the life of the world. We hope you can join us for this exciting week of events!

Music & the Meaning of Time in Little Women

It is no exaggeration to say that the soundtrack from 2019’s Little Women got me through 2020. For starters, Spotify told me so; its end-of-year report informed me that my favorite album was Little Women, my favorite artist was Alexandre Desplat, and my favorite song was “Christmas Breakfast.” Perhaps this is because in December 2019, it was the last movie my wife and I had seen together in our beloved Belcourt Theater before the pandemic, and we’ve remained captivated by it ever since. It reminded us of what is most true at a moment when our very next breaths seemed to take us into a tragic new world.

Let it Be Awkward

What if it’s terribly awkward?

That was my first question when a filmmaker named The Arctic told me he wanted to conduct a video experiment with my song “To Cry for You.” His proposal was simple: “I’ll just ask people to let me film them while they listen to the song.”