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Typically, January offers us the worst of the year, but Netflix came in clutch with an inquisitive stop-motion feature called The House. Melvin & Dan chew on each segment with curiosity, tackling how the project made them feel as a whole.
Topics:
- As movie people, Melvin & Dan are used to being asked by others, “Hey, have you seen this weird, obscure film?” and it just turns out to be a film that most people haven’t seen a trailer for.
- Melvin asks Daniel how he feels and interprets the first segment in The House.
- Melvin: “I think art is most interesting when it’s not factual. When it’s more interpretive.”
- Detailing Segment 2 and experiencing how the house itself refuses to cooperate.
- Daniel: “One thing that all three of these do wonderfully well is you really sympathies with the characters. Where their problems are so mundane and relatable.”
- Melvin shares some observations his wife, Kathryn, had regarding Segment 2, which lends credence to the intense tragedy of this particular short story.
- Also, Melvin typically isn’t all for nihilistic depictions of humanity (that humans are inherently bad, or worthless, or posture goodness despite their badness). He makes a case for this. But sometimes a story like Segment 2 captures the grotesque sadness of the human condition.
- For Daniel, each story gave a sense of “none of you belong here” and “trying to pretend that this will work out when it’s doomed from the start.”
- When we get so focused on our hopes, dreams, or whatever gives us identity, we often miss what’s most important: the freedom in each other.
- When we embrace an identity in Christ (how he’s paid for our sins, how he loves us despite our sin, how he renews us from our sin), we are no longer enslaved to passions and lifestyles that give us a counterfeit self-worth or value because we become what we were always meant to be: loved by and loving God. We, then, can be loved by and we can love God doing countless things.
- Daniel, on Segment 3: “I thought it was a great way to illustrate the way you’re not tied down to hereditary suffering.”
Recommendations:
- Does God Care How We Worship? (Book)
- The Signal (2007) (Movie)
- Here (Graphic Novel)
The House is Rated TV-MA. It features Mia Goth, Matthew Goode, Claudie Blakley, Jarvis Cocker, Susan Wokoma, HelenaBonham Carter, Paul Kaye, and Will Sharpe. Directed by Emma De Swaef (Segment 1), Niki Lindroth von Bahr (Segment 2), and Paloma Baeza (Segment 3). The House is available on Netflix.
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Melvin Benson is the Founder, Editor-In-Chief, and Lead Host of Cinematic Doctrine. He’s written fiction and nonfiction for over a decade with short stories featured on the Creepypasta Wiki and Wattpad. His novelette Ethereal Temptation, a teen drama with a tinge of magical-realism, can be read for free here. His hope is to see King Jesus glorified as far as the east is from the west!
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