The Invention of Truth

Okay, so I lied. Today's blog is not going to be a direct statement of belief, but an examination of a movie. This past spring we watched The Invention of Lying, a movie that got mixed reviews and not very strong box-office. I'm writing about it because, though I'm not sure what the makers of the film intended, I get the feeling they thought they were creating a masterful satire of religion that makes it look foolish.

Spoiler alert-- I give away a lot of this movie's plot below!

The movie is set in a world where nobody lies; everybody tells the truth about what they are feeling and thinking, all the time. There is no fiction, including in movies, which are all lectures, and apparently no religion. Ricky Gervais stars as Mark, a screenplay writer who loses his job, can't get the girl he loves to love him back, and is about to be thrown out of his apartment. This desperate situation pushes him to tell a lie, and once he starts, he can't stop. He makes up fake history for a lecture film, thus creating fiction, and restarts his career. Everyone believes all his lies because the concept of lying is foreign to them.

He eventually tells his dying mother that there is a place where everyone goes when they die where they get a house and be with everyone they love-- on other words, the popular conception of heaven. When word of heaven gets out, Mark is pressured to reveal more, and he eventually writes down ten rules on pizza boxes, and reveals to the world the existence of the "big man in the sky" who decides who gets to go to heaven who doesn't, based on how good each person's level of goodness or badness. This speech eventually leads to the founding of churches, one of which is called "A Quiet Place to Think About the Big Man in the Sky."

On the surface, it might appear that the filmmakers have succeeded in revealing religion as ridiculous. But a deeper reading of the film brings some other insights to the surface. For one, as I've often discovered when people attack religion, the movie parodies a version of religion that is so simplistic that the religion is almost a parody in and of itself. The idea of God as a "big man in the sky" is a child's picture of God. The idea of God punishing and rewarding is certainly in the Bible, is not in the simplistic, legalistic way is is presented here. The satire here is an assault on a seven-year-old's religion. Granted, many adults have the religious sensibilities of seven year-olds, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

What I find more interesting, though, is that while Mark tells the girl he loves that he "did a bad thing" in making up the big man in the sky, the rest of his lies generally have positive consequences. Even more interesting is the fact that world as he knows it, a world of only facts, is not only deadly dull, but is a world of despair. As Mark walks through a nursing home ("A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People") the residents clamour about every day being worse than the last. A man in his apartment building is opening thinking of suicide, and in this world, no one cares. The girl Mark loves, Anna, played by Jennifer Garner, is only interested in a good-looking genetic match (played by Rob Lowe) for a husband. Other considerations are irrelevent-- only genetics matter.

In fact, this world of cold, hard facts is a wretched place to live until Mark begins telling his lies. In a telling scene, Anna sees a boy being teased for his appearance in a park, and, under Mark's influence, tells him there is more to him than meets the eye. And there probably is. She isn't telling the boy a lie-- she's telling him a truth. As always, there is a difference between the truth and the facts.

Although I think the movie is intended as a send up of religion, and although it does parody the lies of advertising well, I think that The Invention of Lying is less a parody of religion than an unintended satire about what it would be like to live in a world where scientific fact is the only truth. In the end, it is looking beyond the obvious facts of surface appearances that matters. It is finding value in people that can't be proved or quantified that makes us truly human and life worth living. The world of The Invention of Lying is a godless dystopia that shows us that when facts are all we have, we aren't left with much.

The world is made better, not necessarily by Mark's lies, but by his seeing beyond, and above, the facts to value being human in a way that the facts alone can't support. The Invention of Lying sets out to make religion look bad, but ultimately shows us how a empty a purely materialist world might be. And that's the truth.