Let's Go to the Movies

I love a good story. Since we have no cultural equivalent of the fireside shaman telling stories to the tribe, we must rely on movies.

I love movies. My wife, daughter, and I have quite a collection. I am not sure of their motives, but I love a really good story that excites my imagination and takes me away from it all for just a little while.

I am drawn to the dark heroes, Batman, the Punisher, Boondock Saints. I love the stories of the vigilante, taking justice into his own hands, making things right for others by punishing those that do evil. There are times when I see injustice that I'd like to be one of those guys.

Then, there are my favorites; I love the sweeping epics, great battles with heroes who give their lives for something greater than themselves, Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, Last of the Mohicans, and theThree Musketeers. Hollywood doesn't do enough of these.

I crave stories of redemption like the Road to Perdition, Pulp Fiction, 3:10 to Yuma, The Unforgiven, Terminator 1 & 2 and the Count De Monte Cristo. These type of stories really hit at the heart of the human condition, sinners searching for atonement.

This leads to the darker side. I really enjoy the Anti-heroes, the guys you cheer on though they are really scoundrels, such as Payback, Oceans 11, Maverick, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Sometimes it's fun when the bad guys win, especially when it is other bad guys they are beating out.

Sometimes, I need tales of harsh reality that fit my darker moods, movies like Falling Down, Lord of War, Beyond the Gates, and the City of Joy. I have to be in the mood for these. Sometimes, working in ministry, movies are just a little too real and hit close to home, so I mostly avoid things that pluck too forcefully on the heartstrings.

The new stock of Irreverent Fairy Tales – Shrek, Ella Enchanted, and Hoodwinked are more along my lines than the old Cinderella and Snow White stuff that I get to watch with my daughter.

Also, I am a guy, so there is always a place for the gratuitous destruction and non-stop action of Die Hard (the whole series), Mission Impossible (also the whole series), Conan, and Desperado. There is a line from a movie called, Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human, where the alien observer notes that human women seem to like movies where one person dies really slowly and human men seem to like movies where a lot of people die really quickly.

And finally, let us not forget those movies with no redeeming value except laughter – Blazing Saddles, Dumb & Dumber, Operation Petticoat, Rocket Man and the entire Bob Hope/Bing Crosby On the Road series of movies.

With all of that said, my favorite movie of all time contains the best of all of those characteristics: The Princess Bride.

If you were expecting some deeper message in this post, there isn’t one. I just wanted to talk about movies.

Two Movies

This weekend, I watched two movies that are worth comment. Life just isn’t like the movies. Usually. But, sometimes, they mirror real life in a way that can be exquisitely raw.

The first movie that I saw was ‘Last Kiss.’ It was a date night movie for my wife and I. Earlier in the week, we were at Wally World, getting new shoes for my daughter. After about a half an hour looking at shoes and realizing that the girls weren’t anywhere near done, I wandered over to the $3 movie bin. (Hey, if a man can’t spend $3 on a movie for his wife, what’s this world coming to?) I found this movie that billed itself as a romantic comedy and it had the guy from ‘Scrubs’ in it, a show my wife likes. What could go wrong?

Everything.

This movie is agonizingly close to reality. It is a movie about relationships, broken ones. It was not the ‘romantic comedy’ that it billed itself as. No, this movie is about the destruction of relationships. Marriages fell apart, relationships were destroyed, parents fought over their children. There was infidelity and dysfunctional relationships right and left. I've seen far to many destroyed relationships of close friends and people I care about, to appreciate this movie.

Save your $3 and buy your wife a big chocolate candy bar.

I would recommend this movie to one group of people. I believe that I might just send it back to my old Bible college to the counseling department. It should be a class assignment: each student must take one of the characters and describe the process for counseling this person. The people in the movie are so real that the process of counseling them would be great practice.

The second movie that I saw was also on a date night. This time, it was daddy-daughter date night. I took my little girl out to see the movie of her choice and for a little gelato afterwards. She chose the movie, ‘Up’.

This movie, I would recommend. It too is about relationships. The core of the story is about a man and a woman who get married and grow old together. She dies in the first 20 minutes of the movie and the rest of the movie involves him fulfilling a promise to her while learning to find other relationships in his life.

I am not ashamed to say that I cried in this movie. The writers do such an excellent job of making you love this couple, it’s hard not to cry when you see him alone. It really strikes to the heart of my own fears. I love my wife. A lot. And, I recognize the awful truth that one day, one of us will go before the other one.

Every love story has a sad ending. There is a deep truth there that was at the heart of each of these movies. Each movie showed the pain and grieving that comes with the loss of a relationship. Unfortunately, we live in a society where the first movie is a better example of relationships than the second.

I am distressed at the state of marriage in our world. Life is short, painfully so. We have the briefest time on this earth to live and love. Why, then, would you waste it being miserable and hateful to someone.

The truth is, you can spend a lifetime growing together in a healthy relationship, facing down your problems and learning to work together OR, you can spend a lifetime dealing with the baggage from a broken relationship. Either way, you spend a lifetime with that person.

My wife and I both come from broken homes. We could have learned the lesson that relationships are disposable. They aren’t and we didn’t. Instead, we both decided that our marriage was going to last through it all. Our goal is 75 years and then we’ll renegotiate.

We’ve lasted 13 years so far, through some really tough times and through some really great times. We’ve had the 2nd Year lull and the 7 year itch. We’ve had struggles with having children and the delight of adoption. We’ve had arguments that shook the walls and we’ve laughed together, played together, cried together, and loved together.

Relationships are hard. I won't lie to you. You will never hurt another person in this world as much as the person that you truly love. To grow in love, you must be vulnerable, and when you are vulnerable, you will get hurt. Working through that hurt as a partnership, opening up to each other, and growing old together will make for an adventure that outshines any movie script.

Healthy relationships require a daily choice to grow closer to each other. They require a regular dose of humility. They require constant care and vigilance. Long lasting, loving relationships don't just happen. They require effort. Trust me; it is worth it.

Both of these movies, ‘Last Kiss’ and ‘Up’ hold the same lesson: a healthy relationship is priceless and a dysfunctional one is worthless – it’s your choice which one you will live with.

I think I need to go watch a guy movie now.

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24.