From the standpoint of Christianity, both Islam and Mormonism are heresies and — if one is genuine about one's theology, and religion is not reduced to a set of banal moral platitudes — should be treated as such.
Great music can be set to the most banal words.
Death, madness, financial disaster and other catastrophes all come up and are dealt with matter-of-factly, with a shrug and a rueful laugh, while the most banal occurrences set private, incommunicable demons churning.
The ladder of social mobility goes both ways, and the terrifying decline that ends in one of the greatest of all cinematic set pieces — a struggle over gold between McTeague and his former friend, Marcus Jean Hersholtt), under the hellish sun of Death Valley — is set up by a banal catastrophe, unemployment.
But even now I have a physical sense of grief, of loss, that can be set off by the most banal thing.
The city was overtaken by banal, sheer towers set in plazas that offered very little to the public and, given the height of the new buildings, were often in shadow.
Unlike the no less mysterious (and secretive) artist Balthus, Stanley did not "escape" a defining identity by fabricating a non-Jewish lineage; he set out instead to transcend banal circumstance by making a name for himself as the highest possible form of invisible man: first photographer, then film director.
The setting was banal, but the book a wild success.
The erosion of this boundary may explain why the dreams New Yorkers report seem so banal, so impoverished when set beside the magnitude of the Event.
Set largely in an upscale yet banal Cincinnati hotel, Anomalisa immerses us into an oddly comic dark night of the soul, as played by stop-motion animated puppets.
