MONDO EXTRAS

Nothing fuels the anger of an atheist more than mystery. Just as things are getting too awkward to watch, we switch to Big Brother's video. "I know more things than you'll ever see!" Steve screams. "Ooh, big boy," Jude shouts, accent going buckwild. "Gizza straight answer then! Nevermind this stuff, what happens after tomorrow? Because the Third Testament doesn't exist. And even if it does exist, it isn't here, and even if it is here, we'll never find it, and even if we find it, we won't believe it -- so what happens then?" That's one of my favorite speeches in this whole thing, because it's totally true. Take out mystery, and it's completely true. The story structure itself begs the question: ask for the impossible, and while that's lovely, you're still dealing with the impossible. The smartest thing this movie ever did was make Jude the valid third voice. Steve v. Johnny is wonderful, if you're an 18th-century woodcut, but we don't live in a Steve world. We don't even live in a Johnny world. We live in a Jude world. Her last name is Roach: the only thing that will survive. And that's the other side to the atheist allergy to mystery: the religious allergy to the obvious. And they're both right, and they're both fucking morons. It's a triangle, but not thesis/antithesis/synthesis classical stuff. It's a real triangle, a love triangle: bad/good/ironic. She packs as much power as either of the other two, and this is where that starts. She's not trapped in anybody's Manichean duality but her own, and it has to do with the real post-Nietzschean shit. I love her. The power of the human mind to reach grace on its own terms, and the resolution of that lies in an ability, a bravery, to take it all on: the seen and the unseen.