Jennie and I watched this movie and she cried throughout the entire thing. It is a genuinely sad movie. Here's the rundown of the plot, don't read it if you are going to see the movie. Hillary Swank is madly in love with Gerard (This Is Sparta!!!!) Butler and he is seemingly more in love with her. She's the nervous worrier and he is the care free Irish karaoke singer. They fight, they make up, and they are super in love. Then he dies of a brain tumor.
Hillary is done. She has resigned herself to being a hermit in her apartment watching old movies and drinking. Her friends intervene. One of the weird parts of this movie has to do with the time table for mourning that every except Swank has. Within hours everyone has a really chipper outlook and seems to want Hillary to assimilate it. The friends and mom bust into the apartment to celebrate her big 3-0. A cake arrives that says it is from Gerard (This is Cake!!!!) and it has a tape attached to it.
From that point on Swank receives letters from her dead husband that he set up before hand. It's sweet and creepy. Which also sums up Harry Connick Jr.'s role. The letters run a gamut from, "Go clubbin' wit da girlies! WooT WoOt!1!" to "Go to Ireland." She's happy then she's sad, then she sleeps with a guy which makes her both happy and sad. Finally she just loses it and runs crying to her mother/Cathy Bates. With a ton of pathos she cries out to her mom about how nothing will ever fill the void her husband left and that no matter what, she is alone. To which her mother replies, "Yep."
So here's where I started thinking. I believe my wife and I love each other as deeply as theses characters, my guess is even more so. We both were effected by the thought of losing each other that this movie brought up. The thing is though, we both know that if the other goes, we're not alone. We know that we aren't going to be eternally separated. We have hope.
The characters in this movie have no hope outside of what's going on around them. Swank's character eventually finds a bit of joy in designing shoes, but that's it. Nothing will ever make her as happy as her ex-husband did. I think this speaks volumes to the natural nihilism that comes with a Godless view of life. I have some Atheist friends who could argue otherwise and be pretty persuasive, but they can't say that they have any hope for life and death working out. If they lose a loved one, they're just alone, and no one and no thing can change that.
When loved ones die it's always hard to handle. There will be grieving no matter how much hope we have, but scripture reminds us that
"But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory. "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ"
I think maybe what I'm trying to say is, if you aren't firmly rooted in Christ then death is victorious and I think that it's hard if not impossible to not have that influence every part of your life. Even if he or she can't quote 1 Corinthians 15:54-57, subliminally there has to be a nagging reminder that they have nothing but death's sting and victory. Everything else is just to keep their mind off of that fact. The hobbies, the jobs, and the relationships are all there to distract from the fact that eventually all that group has is death victorious which is why it makes perfect sense for Hillary Swank's character to have no hope. She wasn't just torn from her one true love, she was thrust back into the heart of her problem, that death wins and she is feeling it's sting.
How would the movie differ if she had "put on the imperishable"? I can't say for sure. I know for myself, I'd be shattered if I lost Jennie. Though, I have hope and I know that death has no victory because it had no victory over Christ. I'd cry and I'd pull away, I'd be testy and I'd miss her, but I'd know that I wasn't alone. I wouldn't be confronted with the nihilistic absence of hope and goodness, I'd see Christ comforting me and reminding me that He is victorious. Death has lost it's power and it's sting.
Maybe you're going through something like what the movie portrays or you've got a situation that is even more difficult. If you have repented of your sins and trusted that Christ is all that things He claims in scripture then you have hope. Hope in spite of your situation, hope in love and hope in loss. Don't lose sight of where that hope comes from and you won't lose sight of that hope.
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