Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The moral landscape of 'Juno'


By DAVID REINHARD

I loved "Juno." Every snappy, tender minute of it.

It's a feel-good movie that doesn't sugar-coat reality to guarantee its good feelings. Its characters come complete with failings and develop in fascinating ways. The dialogue is smart and sassy, the acting's top-drawer and the storytelling compelling. The latter's a real feat, given that "Juno" tells a common tale: a high-school girl's unplanned pregnancy.

What's most welcome is the movie's life-affirming text and subtext. "Juno" isn't another weeper of the week celebrating our abortion culture. Pregnant after sex with a friend and fellow band member, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), the 16-year-old Juno (Ellen Page) decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. No, she's isn't a pro-life religious fanatic caught in the ways of sin. Her initial response is to have an abortion. Her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) offers to call the clinic for her, as she's done for another friend. Juno, however, needs no help. She's as blase about abortion as the sex that led to her pregnancy. She calls the clinic to "procure a hasty abortion."

But on the way in, Juno encounters a classmate who's protesting there, alone. She's not the news media's usual caricature of pro-life protester. She's warm and caring, nothing like the cold, indifferent receptionist waiting for Juno inside the clinic. As Juno continues into the clinic, the protester calls out, "Your baby has fingernails!"

Her words change everything. They awaken Juno to the humanity of the unborn child she carries.

Juno tells her parents she's pregnant and wants to give the baby to a childless couple. They're not pleased, but they reconcile themselves to her choice. "Someone's going to get a special blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation," her stepmom says.

Soon stepmom, Leah and Juno are looking at ultrasound images of her child. And weeping with joy.

"Juno" isn't a pro-life message movie or political film. It doesn't preach to the choir or anyone else. It's simply a wise, witty film from an observant screenwriter (Diablo Cody) who's managed to say something true and beautiful about life in our abortion/divorce culture—the reality of life in the womb and death in an abortion clinic, real-life characters who struggle and grow and do the right thing, a teenage girl's life-affirming but tough decision to give her baby up for adoption. Breakthrough stuff.

Yes, I loved "Juno." But one thing troubled me after the warm feelings washed away: the moral universe of this beautiful movie.

More precisely, the absence of a moral universe.

Oh, the characters generally do the right, life-affirming thing in the end. But I'm not sure they—or anyone else in "Juno"—could tell you why. There are no moral or ethical structures to guide them. There's no overarching belief system. The characters are at the mercy of their feelings. Those feelings can prompt you to do the right thing—not having an abortion, giving your child to a childless couple, not raising a child if you're a teenager—but they can just as easily lead you in less life-affirming and responsible directions. And those feelings can change moment to moment even if you're not a teenage girl.

An actual belief system provides a sturdier moral foundation, though I'll admit it might not go over big in a hip movie about teenage pregnancy. It might smack too much of morality and, egads, religion.

After a dismissive review of one of her short story collections in The New Yorker, Flannery O'Connor wrote to a friend, "It was a case in which it was easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them. This is a generation of wingless chickens, which I suppose is what Nietzsche meant when he said God was dead."

A generation or so later, have the wingless chickens come home to roost? A movie whose main character takes the moral path cannot really explain why.

You've seen those "Random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" bumper stickers. Some get a warm feeling when they see them. It is, however, a sad and desolate phrase. Kindness must be more than random. Beauty must make some sense. They both must have some transcendent meaning. Or we might as well commit random acts of unkindness and senseless acts of ugliness.

For all the charm, uplift and good instincts in this lovely movie, is "Juno" a senseless act of beauty about random acts of kindness?




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