Embellishments make the movie.

May I just say that all the characters seemed just a bit off. Galileo seemed to be made out as this big robust hero who always had his opinions and wasn't ever going to back off of them, not really, whereas, truly (especially after reading Koestler's analysis of Galileo with Kepler), Galileo might have been a little more cautious. Of course for movie's sake, who wants a wishy washy hero?

Secondly, Bellarmine, AKA the writer who got the crap kicked out of him and whose wife was raped by Alex and his droogs in Clockwork Orange, was the stereotypical church head, there to lay down the law about Galileo's ideas and give him an injunction in Rome (whereas, 1. There was no injunction at least that Galileo remembers and if there was an injunction, it wasn't given by Bellarmine, 2. It wasn't in Rome, wasn't it at Galileo's house?). I saw no friendliness exchanged between Bellarmine and Galileo in the movie... that would have complicated things, right?

Thirdly, I didn't read Galileo's daughter (shame on me) but didn't you, Prof. Bary, mention that she died shortly after the 1633 trial? What was she doing still hanging around and cooking goose livers? More importantly, the bit of Galileo's daughter I did read said Virginia never married because Galileo didn't have the dowry, not because her husband to be flipped his lid about Galileo's opinions. More importantly (and this relates to Galileo more than the would be hubby), Galileo's opinions of the poor were, in real life, not very admirable... he looked down on the poor. If I remember right, in the movie, didn't he sort of sarcastically chastise Virginia's fiancé for being such a stuck up rich guy?

Anyway, bottom line is that the whole thing was super oversimplified for sake of antagonizing and protagonizing certain characters (ahemma hem) all for the story. I'd imagine the actual Galileo story on screen would be pretty confusing, disappointing and disheartening for everybody. Too many actual characters... and it would take a semester to get through. :)

Erm.

I spent quite a few hours yesterday and a bit this morning as well on this piece and I for some reason can't grasp the common thread. I feel like there are a lot of different themes going on in this piece, but they don't want to be sewn together in my head and I can't get why. What I get from this piece is merely reiteration of the fact that Pope John Paul, 350 years after the fact, says the exact things that Galileo was saying and that if the church had allowed this 'elbow room' in the first place instead of letting personalities get in the way (I got that little bit from Koestler...), the whole situation probably could have been avoided.

What little of Sharratt's assessment of Catholics I found (not that it isn't there, probably that I just missed it...) is interesting (that they are a bit embarrassed about the whole thing when they ended up quietly "overturning" the ruling)... I don't know who he's talking about though because I know when I was in Catechism School, they read the Bible pretty literally, but perhaps that speaks more to the Catholic company I kept back in the day as opposed to who's really out there on the Catholic front. I mean, how could you not be sheepish about that sort of thing?

The bit I don't get is how the Church can be embarrassed about that sort of thing without trying to avoid it in the future. The whole gay marriage thing is really going right in that direction, what with interpretation of scripture and all.

I don't know how I feel about this piece. Right now it's not settling well and I am having difficulty seeing what light he chose to portray them in post lesson learning, or what have you. I'll come back to it.