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It’s nothing short of coincidental, and often humorously so, when a person’s name fits his personality type. Charles Dickens made this an enduringly entertaining theme in his works. You need only turn a few pages to bear witness to his capacious cache of unforgettable character names. Hear the name Ebenezer Scrooge and try not to think of an avaricious curmudgeon. Pumblechook, Pickwick, and Twist—they needn’t further introduction beyond their names.

A similar play on names applies to White House press secretaries past and present. With a name like Joseph Short, who served during the Truman administration, I think of a man quick-tempered and terse, preferring pith to prolix. Robert Gibbs, an Obama appointee, draws a quick connection to the word “glib”—a term applicable to any politician behind a podium. Fluency with a tincture of insincerity is the language of any lawman worth his salt. Josh Earnest—now that’s a name well-suited for irony and a quick wit. For the president’s most valuable and voluble mouthpiece, you’d better darn well expect a little candor.

This brings us to the man currently heading the Brady Briefing Room—Sean Spicer. His name continues the tri-syllabic trend of the predecessors (Ro-bert Gibbs, Josh Ear-nest, Sean Spi-cer—three syllables the whole lot of them), but adds an alliterative punch. And it’s not just the ear that’s aroused; those with bland palates might perspire just thinking about Sean’s spicy dab on the tongue. You know the feeling: even an unintended nibble can leave you speechless and sweating with lips like lava and a forehead furled.

Sean Spicer has this affect. The man conducts heat in such a way that an Indian chef would blush. In Spicer, we have the perfect name for the man. We’ll call it a literary victory, and Dickens would be proud.

Spicer, who previously passed his time as the communications director for the RNC, scorched journalists from the very start. It all begins with his manner of speech. His idiolect is an inarticulate thing. He’s not eloquent by most measures, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for an administration forwarding an “every-man” ideal.

There’s something to be said for “setting the tone”, though, and he certainly did with his erroneous statement about the president’s inauguration crowd size. It hardly needs retelling, but it was Spicer’s first official fallacy…on his first day. While he wasn’t the only one peddling this blatant untruth, he is the administration’s mouthpiece, and as such his words carry weight. We have a right to the veridical, truthful goings-on, and no amount of vanity changes that.

Journalists in Washington are well-accustomed to the political prevaricators with whom they speak, but Spicer is a different breed. Not only is he elusive, but he’s aggressive as well. He carries himself with an abrasive, evasive, and above all eristic style, which is starting to shift America’s sympathy toward the media—something I thought I’d never see. He’s contentious—often unnecessarily so—and he’s become the bully of the Brady Briefing Room while the press receives his blows.

Although Obama’s eight years provide a much larger sample size from which to find examples (Trump will only soon mark his fourth month in office), in general and throughout his tenure, Obama was treated by the media much more amicably. Between the reporters and Obama, there seemed always to be some kind of unspoken blanket of mutual benignity. As a cool, charismatic, citified elite, Obama was immediately embraced as one of “them”. The largely liberal media was made comfortable by this, and reporters began gaining a reputation for flinging flaccid questions at “their” guy. Any punches left over from not having been pulled were thrown with kid gloves. It’s true, Spicer hasn’t been dealt Obama’s hand, but the acrimony between him and the reporters is a bit extreme.

When Spicer isn’t engaged in his weekly fist-to-cuffs with the media, there’ some humor to be found in him. Unlike his boss Mr. Trump, who has an uncanny inability to laugh at himself, Spicer has some soft spots of self-deprecation. They’re hard to find, but with enough prodding on his corpulent carapace, you’re bound to find one or two. If he’s not entirely self-effacing, at the very least he’s comically self-aware. Even he was unable to keep up his tough-as-nails veneer after seeing Melissa McCarthy’s riotous raillery on SNL.  “A man cannot make him laugh”, Shakespeare says in As You Like It. Luckily for us, McCarthy is a gal and can cause in him a little chuckle.

But, like anyone who’s been on the receiving end of a satiric sketch, Spicer meekly asked McCarthy to dial it back a bit. Fair enough. No one wants to be the butt of the joke, but it shows—like a good-natured nudge to the navel with a bit too much oomph—her satirical jab was a bit too tough. He would have done better to laugh right along, take it in stride, and maybe come back with his own witty aside. Spicer is fertile ground, and SNL is unlikely to ease up. Much like the memory of Sarah Palin, who’s known now more for Tina Fey’s halcyon heyday, Spicer risks becoming SNL legend.

While his SNL response showed an ability to (almost) laugh at himself, he followed it with a cringe-worthy second act. He made a statement that jumped atop the hierarchy of the many recently reprehensible sound bites. For some odd and ahistorical reason, he asserted that Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons on his own people. It reads much worse out of context, but if we are to give him some intellectual pliancy and lend him an empathetic ear, I can uncomfortably understand what he was getting at. He was trying to express the egregiousness of Bashar al-Assad’s attack (and thereby, justify America’s missile strike) by saying that even Hitler didn’t resort to using chemical weapons on Germans the way Assad has on Syrians.

Admittedly, to render Spicer’s statement in this way isn’t a task one could easily defend. You’d have to dive deeply into the depths of semantics and even then, it would be difficult to shine a favorable light on what Spicer said. German Jews, sons and daughters of their vaterland as much or more so than their German Christian neighbors, were victims of the gas chambers in Belzic and Birkenau. Syrian citizens are likewise victims of their own regime’s chemical attacks, although they aren’t first concentrated before being killed.

Hours passed after Spicer made his statement, and each was filled with apoplexy and anxiety. This lasted until Spicer appeared with Wolf Blitzer for an emergent apology. The damage control department has become one of this administration’s busiest. Trump’s surrogates, more often than not, have a tendency to double down whenever their words have the slightest potential of defense. This, however, was not such a case. That the mouthpiece for the Chief Executor could have said something so ridiculous required an apology. This was the least Spicer could do and very well had to do.

As such, it was uncomfortable yet essential for him to appear live in front of Blitzer. Blitzer is, to most people’s surprise, is a German-American whose parents, as Auschwitz prisoners before becoming refugees in America, could’ve only prayed that Hitler was not using chemical weapons in the ways Spicer implies he did not.

Spicer, in response to Wolf’s indignation, seemed genuinely contrite. No other response, aside from humble contrition, would’ve been accepted. Such a specious statement required a full-throated apology and explanation, and this is what Spicer delivered. He took Blitzer’s questions on the chin, knowing full-well he couldn’t defend what he had said, and this was commendable. That being said, “he who makes an ass of himself must not take it ill if men ride him”. Wolf rode him, and rightfully so.

Spicer’s apology may have saved some face and bought some time, but his future is by no means secure; the day might still come, and perhaps soon, when he finds his head rolling off Trump’s chopping block. Trump’s is a well-worn chopping block, and one that would have no trouble knowing what to do with a new spice splashed upon it. For the time being, he may want to think more carefully and swallow words more slowly, lest the unfounded ones find themselves sliding off his tongue.

“Action cures fear while inaction creates terror”. These words, spoken by Douglas Horton—a leading clergyman in the mid 1950s—paint a binary portrait with a sweeping brush. More often than not, the answers aren’t so simple or straightforward. Finer bristles are required, nuanced hues must be dabbed, and most importantly, a precise hand need apply them. Smeared upon America’s palette of options in Syria are many shades of grey. The answers to such problems, perhaps to Horton’s surprise, aren’t black or white. They’re not dichotomous or dichromatic, although the world wishes they were.

This past week’s fusillade, which included more than fifty missiles being fired at the Al Shayrat airfield base in western Syria, leaves settling in the smoke an uncomfortable haze. That smoke, fetid as it is, will be sooner swept away than the uncertainty that settles in its place. Both the pundits and the hoi polloi are left adrift in the ambiguity asking the question…“Now what?”

To think that this strike won’t have repercussions is naïve. Irrespective of its appropriateness, it was an American attack. Any Syrian worth his salt and sand in Assad’s regime could claim that as our missiles whistled toward them in the matutinal Middle Eastern sky, America had effectively declared war. In the minds of Syrian government officials, whose egregious absence of morality and humanity has led to countless casualties in their own cities, the attack could be construed as an act of war on America’s behalf. This construal seems to be the Russian government’s view and it mightn’t be farfetched to think the Iranians agree too.

The Pentagon sees the attack much differently. There they contend this wasn’t an act of escalated aggression, but rather one of retribution. Righteous retribution, I should say, for the wanton civilian executions Assad’s carried out. The Syrian despot is accused of having used sarin gas, a noxious and lethal chemical concoction, on his own people more than once. He contests the charges, but the images and anecdotes from Damascus, Aleppo, Saraqib, and Jobar are rather incriminating. It’s indefensible, but the warped Syrian psyche, strengthened by Moscow’s deeply rooted interests in the regime’s perpetuity, might see our strike in a different way.

The question then becomes this: If a similar atrocity occurs, and Assad again rains poison on his own people from the skies above, does the U.S. again intervene? Do we choose to insert ourselves directly a second time (likely with a more aggressive response) or do we remain idle, which would prove that our latest strike was a mere one-off display?

If we choose the former, the Russians might cease looking so amicably at our shared airspaces in Syrian skies. If that becomes the case, we could be just one misstep away from turning our post-Cold War permafrost into an uncomfortably warm affair. And while it’s not entirely clear at this point if Putin has hegemony on his mind in the Middle East, his interest in the region has undoubtedly grown. At the very least, Assad is indebted to Putin for his continued support. Under Russia’s auspices, Assad has quite literally gotten away with murder. The two nations are thus deeply intertwined. It’s obvious then, that at the end of the day, Putin has much more riding on Assad’s success than America has on his failure.

President Trump seems to have affirmed that last sentence. Much has been said about his comments in 2013, when he commented as a private citizen about Assad’s use of his sarin gas against his own kinsmen and women. Trump implored (assumedly so, given the tweet’s letters were capitalized) Obama to keep his distance from Syrian affairs. It’s clear that in his first few months as president, Trump has changed ever-so slightly his tune. He was never a non-interventionist, but he always erred on the sided of keeping our interests stateside. His recent military strike shows, however, that he’s become pliant to the exigencies of the presidency. When the circumstances evolve, so too must former convictions.

But just where will these changing convictions and evolving circumstances take us? Americans have a right to pose this and many other questions. I think it’s far from a querulous inquiry to ask where the administration’s foreign policy stands. Trump has told us he intends to be unpredictable, to act without precedent, and to strike enemies unlike former presidents. But this is discomfiting talk from a man who once toyed with the idea of a nuclear first-strike (“why have them if you can’t use them?” he once pondered aloud). This idea of “strategic” spontaneity might have its time and place, but it also runs the risk of being too hastily deployed.

I hope that this initial attack in Syria, necessary though it may have been in the moment, doesn’t portend unprovoked belligerence to come. This hope is generally shared abroad; foreign leaders were once convinced President Trump was little more than a paper tiger. They’re now re-calculating and considering a different conclusion. Syrian civilians, who have nominally but not willingly accepted the designation as “collateral damage”, have perhaps the most to worry about. So long as America’s salvos can put a cap on Assad’s noxious showers, the Syrian people will come to not only welcome, but beg for more American missiles.

In the attack’s aftermath, although many questions still await answers, a few things have become clear. We know that mere days following the strike, the targeted airfield returned to functioning as though nothing had happened. This was a shocking, and frankly, bathetic turn of events. The explanations for this are two: one is the Syrian government’s obduracy and resilience to a strike. The second is an ineffective and impotent American intervention. How else might one explain such an underwhelming result in a sleeping Syrian airbase?

What’s also persistently clear is that fact that America’s position on the Syrian refugee crisis hasn’t changed. Appalled by the scene, President Trump might’ve been tempted to welcome through our gates more of Syria’s desperate defectors. Having sent the missile salvo, it would make sense for Trump to send a sturdier lifeline Aleppo’s way. However, and much to their misfortune, this won’t be happening any time soon. The heart strings of this administration can be pulled, but only so far. Assistance from afar is fine, but only so long as Syria’s victims don’t turn to seeking succorance on America’s shores.

So it seems as though Trump has chosen from his palette a familiar red to color in his line; Assad’s chemical attacks on Syrian civilians is his line in the sand. But what good is a red line if its covered in the drifts of Damascus’ blood-stained dunes?

In returning to our original quote, we must ask if our action has succeeded in curing fear. Unfortunately, from the look of it, I should think that the disease in need of curing festers on. As for the question, “now what?”, the answer is not so clear. The only thing we know now is that the Syrian, the Middle East, and the entire world awaits America’s next step with bated breath. Take care to inhale.

In George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 play, St. Joan, the eponymous and tragically fated heroine pertinaciously rebukes her detractors. As the story of La Pucelle d’Orleans so remarkably goes, Joan of Arc is endowed with prophetic clairaudience and as such, becomes the resident conversant for the archangel Michael and a few other angelic comrades well-known to Catholic liturgy. When asked by the Archbishop, just how it is she comes to acquire such sapience, Joan responds, “I always know. My voices—”. Such an invidious response prompts Charles VII’s rejoinder, “Oh, your voices, your voices! Why don’t the voices come to me?” Joan assuages her counterparts, at this point, with her reply that the voices do indeed approach them—they simply do not listen.

On the theme of sound and its absence when desired most, Silence, Martin Scorsese’s latest masterful tour de force, places the viewing audience in the position of Charles, the Archbishop, and so many restive ears aching with dogged endurance for a numinous whisper. Based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo, Silence chronicles the attempted religious rescue mission by Portuguese missionaries in 17^th century Japan. Fathers Rodrigues and Garupe, portrayed by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver respectively, intrepidly embark upon a dangerous eastward voyage. Their ecclesiastical instructor, Father Ferreira (played by Liam Neeson), is missing in the foreign Asiatic enclaves and assumed apostatized. The two younger fathers are discouraged from mounting this expedition—a message portending difficulties to beset them—but their credulity for Ferreira’s fidelity is not so easily squashed.

Unfortunately for Rodrigues and Garupe, Japan is not so welcoming to religious eclecticism, particularly that of the parochial elk. The young fathers seek and find among the native inhabitants a small yet zealously devout cabal of conversos with whom they might receive succor. Inquiries regarding Father Ferreira’s whereabouts are disappointingly fruitless, but the Japanese’s religiosity is fecund. The young fathers need not act as proselytizers due to the well-established, staunch Catholic clique. They are able rather to take on a ministerial role in helping to cultivate these evangelical Japanese yokels.

As tends to be the view of most theocratic states, discrepant religious persuasions contrary to the powers at be are seldom embraced welcomingly. The imperial police, sniffing the frustratingly recurrent miasma of Christianity, descend swiftly to exhort the converted to denounce this heretical faith. The terseness with which the police challenge a suspicious person’s faith is simple, if not efficacious. The suspected must step on a Christian relic, a measure minimal but devastatingly definitive. In a scene of high tension, the inveterate scapegrace, Kichijiro, trounces the relic and bids his more sanctimonious friends a hasty adieu. His tendency for truancy when questions of faith are at the helm is a recurring theme.

Damned by their abstinence to step on Christ’s image, three martyrs-to-be are crucified and hoisted into position during low tide, only to face a barrage of saltiness when the waves arrive. This scene is reminiscent of Jesus’s own crucifixion (absent the marine quality) which with the accompaniment of two thieves, made for a party of three. The death scene is anticlimactic but concurrently striking. One of those crucified protracts his inevitable demise, remaining alive on the cross for four days (compared to Jesus’s six hours on Good Friday—a testament to the Japanese man’s endurance).

In lieu of the dangers that have befallen the Christians, the fathers reluctantly agree to separate and proceed independently. It is at this point that the story pivots its focus squarely on Rodrigues, although no momentum is lost with this as the entire tale is told through his narration. Thus ends the fraternal agape with which the two so warmly regard one another. Bereft of his partner, Rodrigues solicits the assistance of some of his sympathizers to help him on his quest to find Ferreira. It is at this time Rodrigues is thrust into the inevitable ontological crisis: exasperated by God’s silence, he asks in so many words “Why have you forsaken me?” and complains of the terrible weight of silence. As though Kierkegaard himself were there to assist—though many centuries his junior—Rodrigues snaps out of his crisis of faith, claiming that “in the silence I heard your voice”.

Buttressed with renewed fidelity, in a classic scene a la The Lion King Rodrigues sees his own unkempt reflection morphed into the face of he who he most emulates in a limpid pool of water. His mangy mane might even rival that of Simba’s. This euphoric and hallucinogenic experience is short-lived, however, as Kichijiro skulks on screen and, once again, double crosses Rodrigues for a more profitable commission than Judas could have hoped for.

The ensuing plot entails the tribulations Rodrigues endures under the thralldom of the Buddhist inquisition committee. His disciples are abused, while Rodrigues—perhaps protected by his Portuguese provenance—continues his sermons and Eucharistic deliverances. The committee attempts to fracture his conviction that the efforts in Japan are worthwhile by reiterating the idea that Christianity simply will not take root and grow on the island nation. Rodrigues is unyielding in the belief that his faith is indeed viable there. Something of an impasse is reached, until a soldier, katana in hand, neatly decapitates an unassuming Christian. The vividness with which the scene plays out made swallowing difficult for me the next day. Though initially devastated by this macabre scene of brutality, Rodrigues regains his trademark religious aplomb. This is to unravel, however, as he experiences Garupe’s wrenching death by drowning. This ends Driver’s performance, which was altogether scant but incredibly well-acted. He seems to have been the only one to take the accent seriously.

The next significant moment is Father Ferreira’s re-emergence, some two hours into the film. Rodrigues is at long length awarded an audience with his now apostatized mentor. Even though so many had intimated to Rodrigues his teacher’s band wagon leap, it is a moment of utter disbelief when he finally faces the truth. Ferreira at first prevaricates, but eventually affirms that he has in fact apostatized for the preservation of himself and his followers. Neeson, as Father Ferreira, seems not to have been thoroughly informed of his character’s parentage. He commits to custom with his Irish brogue, not even attempting an Iberian accent. This is quickly pardoned and easily overlooked, however, in light of his character’s looming gravitas. Ferreira implores Rodrigues to join him in apostasy and to “pray with your eyes open” and instructs to him that “mountains and rivers can be moved, but man’s nature cannot be moved”.

All the while, the Japanese clerics commence the torturously torpid inverted bloodletting process on some of Ferreira’s Christian devotees—a fool proof method to incite apostasy. Procrustes himself could not have imagined a more gruesome process and a lapidation akin to St. Stephen’s would have been a more humane sentencing. Rodrigues, recognizing his culpability in their imminent deaths, succumbs and jettisons the faith.

A few technical aspects must be commented on. The cinematography is as beautiful as it is intense. The meandering shorelines and densely verdant forestry panoramas look as though they were imagined artistic renderings rather than mises en scene. Juxtaposed with the enormity of these shots are scenes of profound physical closeness and intimacy. The most memorable example of such is the unnervingly proximate shot of Jesus’s face late in the film. This, being an epiphanic moment of climactic revelation for the protagonist, is perfectly captured. Throughout the film, the director nimbly serpentines scenes of macro and microscopic scales in this way.

Noticeably absent from the film is a proper score. The vapidity left from this omission leaves vacant a space beautifully inhabited by other means. The absence provides greater impact and import to the scenery and the strenuous dialogue. It also, in some ways, reiterates just how foreign the clime is. Bereft of a score, one is left attempting to fill the other senses. Fortunately, the visuals provide much to be satisfyingly absorbed. The lack of a score reiterates the immersion into a foreign land, where even the biophony is nearly inaudible. So accustomed are we to the rhapsodic musical pieces associated with godliness (consider, on this point, Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ) that this is a welcomed omission.

In the end, it is not enough that the occidental walls of the church “have fallen down” if the oriental ones remain so high. Referring to the gospel of Luke, Joan of Arc says, “tell him that it is not God’s will that he should take his hand from the plough”. Perhaps, through the weight of the burdensome silence was God’s message that a new hand should not meddle with the tight grip on the power at be. And although both Joan and Rodrigues meet ends differing in degree, God’s messages were not lost on either.

A morning’s commute, particularly by car, leaves very little to the imagination for the unimaginative. In the truest sense, it’s little more than a mean to an end. We do it every day, usually at approximately eight a.m. and again at five. These daily doldrums through which we semi-autonomously drive (before the caffeine has driven through us) have led me to begin tuning into the things I see on the road around me. Namely the things are names, but not of people or places, but of fellow cars cozying up to me. Between the yawns and the stop signs that punctuate each morning’s sleepy commute, I began to take notice of car makes and models and the meaning behind some of the most frequent ones. It’s become an interest piqued by boredom rather than inspiration.

I’ve learned that one’s automobile serves society as an expedient of sorts. It transports not only a person but a perception as well. There’s no better way to show off social status than while watching and waiting in the left-turn lane. It’s never easier to tell the haves from the have-nots. Names become interesting in this light—which…well wouldn’t you know it…just changed. The light is green. Take a journey with me and you might see what I mean.

Though not as ubiquitous on the roadways, the Land Rover is a wonderful car to first explore. The latest Rover advert shows its Sport careening down a dangerous declivity, presumably in some hinterland hundreds of miles from the next closest troglodyte tribe. How often, I ask, is the average Land Rover owner navigating a terrain as tortuous as this? In my experience, it seems as though the greatest concentration of Land Rovers are found in the flattest, most affluent places on Earth. The Land Rover Adventure evokes (apropos, another of its models is called the Evoque) similarly enthralling reveries of ventures to be had. In reality, roving through a gravel parking lot at a softball game will likely be the most rugged encounter those rotund tires see. These names, plastered on every one’s posterior, try to capture the essence of what life might be. Seldom, if ever, are these sporty and adventurous ends realized.

In contrast to the Rover is the humble Honda. If we are to anthropomorphize at will, the Honda to me is the diffident, deferential, and less successful little brother to the Land Rover. Honda’s models appear to cater to a socially conscious milieu—a milieu, I might add as a proud Honda owner, within which I live. The Civic, for instance, whispers intonations of “civic duty” in my ear every time the ignition awakens the engine’s buzzing bowels. The Civic is economized in both size and pomp. One must flout all flamboyance when driving this car, believe me.

Honda builds other models like the Accord and the Fit. Like their Civic sibling, these names stimulate scant sexy appeal. That classic archetypal young, restive beat generation degenerate, driving itinerantly on Route 66 wouldn’t be caught dead in such a humdrum Honda. Honda’s models sound more like a prescription for a pacific, health-conscious world rather than masculine contraptions of muscle, steel, and fuel. If take the model names as prescriptions, we might assume the Honda ethos to be this: Honda wants of us a civic-mindedness, an accordance with our fellows and our laws, and physical fitness to top things off. Perhaps the Chinese automaker is on to something here, but I for one have their number; Honda’s subliminal, salubrious edicts aren’t lost on me.

Nissan, Honda’s Japanese competitor, is a bit more exciting with its models’ names. The Rogue, Frontier, Altima, Pathfinder—all names that push the pistons and stir the camshafts in the mind. These four terms taken out of place make me think of things like Teddy Roosevelt whacking with a machete at the River of Doubt or Lewis and Clark blindly pushing their way toward the brink of the West. In other words, I’m not thinking of mid-sized sedans.

The Rogue, similar in style and function to the aforementioned Accord, evokes the feeling of a very different experience. Upon turning the Rogue’s key, one becomes a picaresque Jack Sparrow, equipped with the derring-do to drive alone in the HOV lane. Roguish, indeed. I like to believe, once combined, Nissan’s models create an exciting tale. Perhaps the company’s plan is for you to roguishly embark…upon an unformed frontier…find a path unbeknownst and reach the Altima (ultimate?) destination? If so, I say bravo to the company’s poetic panache.

American cars are always less inventive. Ford’s Focus could be a harbinger to today’s campaign trying to curb distracted driving. It’s also possible Ford was working its way through employee attention deficiency at headquarters. Imagine seeing the word Focus as the last thing to fall from the assembly line as the car moves toward the lot. The Fiesta is easily enough understood with even the most basic bilingualism, and the name is one that dances off the tongue in North and South America alike (the same can’t be said for the Chevy Nova, which, when added to it a space, becomes no va, or “not going” in Spanish. It may as well be called limón). The Taurus is suited for those born between April and May and the Escape is what I would like to do when thinking too long about these names.

The bourgeois motorists make themselves known in their BMWs and their Mercedes Benzes. These cars come from the Germanic tribes, with all their famed craftsmanship and repute. It seems both spend too much attention on luxury and design and not enough on names. They choose names that are blander, yet somehow contradictorily more imaginative than the competition. The BMW or Benz doesn’t preordain the driver. The BMW has the stock X1, X3, and X5. Mercedes has the G Class, E Class, and S Class. There’s nothing telling about them; they’re mere letters and numbers—like cattle—but with an emphasis on “class”. You’re not made in the image of a roguish, civic, sporty, or focused motorist. Instead, the mystery is left to driver’s device. Class is the springboard, ambiguity and intrigue take the wheel.

Perhaps mine are the misplaced musings of an uninspired motorist on his way to work. Perhaps I’d better pay more attention to the street signs ahead. Either way, the focus groups should know that their days spent naming names aren’t for naught. I’ve taken notice, and maybe from now on, during the dry diurnal drives, you might too.

“Hacksaw Ridge” is in the running for this year’s Best Picture award, but the nomination seems to me misplaced. While the title might evoke a cautious feeling that this is another teen slasher flick, nothing could be further from the truth; any WWII aficionado would be quick to recognize this and put your Jason and Freddie nightmares to rest. This film is based on the true events and circumstances of one, perhaps hitherto unknown and obscure American soldier embroiled in the tumult that was the Pacific theater.

Auspicious though the subject matter is for cinematic success, the film’s first sixty minutes are underwhelming and boring. Andrew Garfield’s character (who later ages into the film’s protagonist) and his brother find themselves in a fraternal tussle—a brotherly fisticuffs. There’s nothing abnormal about it, until the fight escalates to a Cain and Able-esque fever pitch and young Desmond Doss (Garfield’s character) acquaints his brother’s skull with the soft side of a cinderblock. From that point on, as young Desmond gapes at the family Decalogue and its proscription to kill, we’re expected to infer this is Desmond’s damascene moment. It’s not explicitly revealed, but the implication is that our character has begun a life of incorruptible Gandhian-style pacifism. This epiphany is cursory and not altogether clear.

Doss holds fast to his pacifistic ways, which are admittedly unusual for a young Southern man in a world at war. He’s sworn an oath, however, to tread a non-violent path. Much to the consternation of the other cadets and commanding officers, from this oath, Doss won’t budge. His stance is unchanged, even after he sustains a crepuscular beating by fellows in the cadre.

He’s eventually court-martialed and made to stand before the military camp’s court. Being that these legal and physical troubles occur before the film’s mid-point, it’s no spoiler to say our hero trumps the brutes. He earns his place as a bona fide soldier, but without a scabbard or sword. Nonetheless, without a weapon Doss wants to be with the boys on the front line.

Macabre verisimilitude describes well the film’s second half. If its antebellum period was a bit of a bore, the second half overcompensates. As the film shifts from North Carolina to Nagasaki and beyond, the violence never stops. You’re led to an exciting mélange of combat scenes, but the path to arrival is not so smooth. The transition lacks continuity and care. Nonetheless, as the American soldiers charge forth through the sluiceway atop the namesake ridge, the action is immediate and inexhaustible. The many combat scenes were filmed well, so much so that the flamethrower’s penumbra nearly scorched my own forearm hairs.

The pugilist scratching and seething to expose itself from Gibson’s bowels overplays its hand. The first fighting scenes are overindulgent and I had a feeling of being force-fed. I waited for an hour during the preprandial character development, and my gullet wasn’t prepared for the brouhaha that rushed out at me too quickly. Horrific shots of limbs torn asunder, explosions, and crumbling ramparts might have been more deftly depicted and steadily paced. The change from the bucolic alpenglow on the Virginian mountains to the precarious southern Japanese precipices was too much to take.

A consistent theme throughout the film was a general reliance on that which is objectionably cliché. It came in many forms. It was only a matter of time before the un-armed and therefore vulnerable Doss engaged in a bare-knuckled throw down with a Jap. Sans-rifle, he struggled to the brink of death, and was only saved courtesy of a fellow G.I.’s good aim. Pacifism has its place on the pulpit, but its practicality is a question. One pacifist makes for a hero, but only insofar as the thousands supporting him are shooting to kill. More than one pacifist, and you leave quick work for an enemy.

Other compulsory clichés pop up, including the time Doss gazes with longanimity at his pocket-sized photo of his young bride’s face. It would hardly be an American war flick without the stifled but fledgling love affair between the native son and his beloved. Their relationship is somewhat hastily strewn together, but the two surely make for a comely couple. Garfield’s boyish infatuation with his lady back home receives in return a bat of the eyelashes. At first reserved, she succumbs to his gentle charm. This sub-plot is incomplete, and leaves the viewer wanting a bit more depth. The relationship seems only to serve the purpose of resurfacing amidst the inevitable toil to come. She gives Doss a pretty face upon which he might rest his war-wearied eyes. Otherwise, their love is one implemented solely for another cliché.

As an act of perhaps unintended omission, there was a noticeable dearth of ethnic diversity. I’m slow to even bring this up, but ever since the “#OscarsSoWhite” outrage, it’s an unavoidable theme. As director, Mel Gibson might’ve immunized himself from the cudgels of the “PC” police by including in the film a few more skin tones. Perhaps he was trying for authenticity and North Carolina’s 1940 barracks simply didn’t have a black face to boot. In this case, if historicity was the hand that drew the scene, there’s no outrage to be had.

Two other examples show Gibson’s heavy-handed symbolism and analogism. The first is executed more adeptly and with an artist’s touch. Garfield begins the film ascending the Virginia Blue Ridge mountains with ease, so much so that he’s able to reach down and assist his brother and later his spouse to meet him where he alone stands. He does much the same on the precipice of Hacksaw Ridge only, during the later occasion, by lowering his brothers-in-arms to the buttressed reinforcements below. By lowering them, he effectively raises them with symbolic vigor and spirit that they desperately need.

The second example of heavy-handedness is the literary Christ figure. Christ’s inclusion has become a contractual obligation for any Hollywood hoping to have Gibson star or direct. That said, it would’ve been quite a revisionist’s account if his previously directed film lacked a literary Christ figure of the same sort; I’d love to know what end would be in store for The Passion of the Christ.

In the case that Garfield’s parallels to Christ are at all unclear throughout the film, the final scene leaves very little to the imagination. It’s at this point we witness our supine hero descending from the heavens toward his earth-bound glory. The literary Christ figure is thus complete with his talismanic bloodied good book held in his ethereal clutch. The metaphor is laid with a heavy hand, where perhaps more nuance might have sufficed.

All said, this is a blue-blooded film rife with the sounds and scenes of a proudly patriotic and conservative America since passed. In the times such as we find ourselves, these themes are a welcome change of pace. Heavy-handed and over-compensatory at times though it may be, this film is easy to enjoy and ideal for those needing a re-affirmation of America’s splendid men and her splendid past.