I went to see it today. While fresh on my mind I will post my strong and encouraged reaction. If you have not seen it I am not trying to give it away but obviously you will know more than if you read no reviews. ... It makes a strong moral emotional impact. I missed many words in the songs but think I caught the story pretty well. Such movies leave me convinced they are, even if unintended, attempts to make the basic Christ story far more relevant and applicable today than typical 'evangelical' and much orthodox interpretations are doing. If only people could seriously consider that such public collective art and story can truly be a most needed 'word of God' in our culture. Some movies are quite worthless but some could have strong redeeming and spiritually guiding effects on our time of spiritual wondering as a nation and world. I rank this movie as one in this category. All the themes are here... the perils of human love, grace, law,evil, good, mercy, forgiveness of others and self forgiveness. Very absent, and I am grateful, are any typical orthodox images of the idea of sacrificial and blood atonement... where someone has to sacrifice in order to appease God's wrathful sense of justice. Yes sacrifice is very needed and appropriate as love's response to life and to create justice(in the human community... not of God's holiness demanding anyone's moral perfection.) I was moved deeply. I think both main male characters were too much impressed with the final authority of any legal or moral law. One of them , because of devotion to formal civil and religious law, was never able to extend mercy or receive it for himself. In the end he turned such devotion to law even against himself(This certainly showed his sincere conviction but also how spiritually misguided he was all along.) This character had acts of mercy and unconditioned love extended to him but he was never able to make it become fully conscious that this is the actual and true nature of God. He seemed rather to see it as just some weak man who ignorantly gave it to him to their own destruction. So he is shown as never learning the most central lessons of spirituality.
The other was taught by the injustices of life to hate and mistrust life and others but then, due to a direct uninvited experience of grace from an official of religion, he had a transformation. He then was able naturally, not by self determination, to act with grace and love toward others along his convoluted path. So he experienced both receiving and giving love and grace throughout his life. But his learning was still not complete for he felt that law breaking and failed character in his early years were a part of his life story that he should shield his adopted and dearly loved daughter from. He made arrangements for her to never know of his actual shadow. This showed, I think, that he did not yet realize that his moral failures were just as much necessary and as important part of the story of his spiritual life development as those actions of love and grace that he selflessly performed.
My heart sunk when it seemed that the daughter was not going to be given the full 'truth' of her step father's spiritual journey. In the end she did find him and was able to learn the full truth from him. This gave her a chance to learn of how grace and love had transformed her Dad's life and it gave her father his last lesson... which is that anyone who loved him was delighted to forgive him and to thereby even more appreciate the good qualities of his life. And certainly the greatest lesson of all is that he was invited to forgive and fully receive himself , as he had done for others, including the lost and shadow side of his early life. These are to me the central elements needing stressed in the Christ story in our day. Personally I do not think such movies catch the eye of the nation simply by chance. We can learn much from them. Good to remember this novel was written in 1830, quite ahead of its time as a real life parallel to a spiritual interpretation of the gospels' story of Jesus.
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