A Road Less Travelled

Death is a very frightening thing. We have no idea what is on the other side, what’s waiting for us, what’ll happen when we stop breathing and moving. The far side is terrifying. I should say, apart from Jesus and what He’s said the other side is terrifying and all that. But that’s the kicker. The only way to live and die without fear is to trust Jesus.

I watched Reign Over Me because one of my sisters and one of my brothers said it was excellent. It was. It was an excellent portrayal of grief and sorrow where there is no Jesus to trust. The movie is about a man, Alan, who has no one to talk to who bumps into his college roommate, Charlie, who lost his entire family in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It’s four years later and Charlie still hasn’t begun to mourn. He has persuaded himself he doesn’t remember anything about his wife and daughters. But Alan wants to help him.

In a strange way it’s a buddy movie, the best sort of buddy movie. Alan and Charlie want the best for each other in their own way. Some of the most enjoyable moments are when they are just hanging out together listening to music, riding around the city, watching funny movies. But hanging in the background of Charlie’s life is what he’s lost. He can’t forget, he can’t move one, he doesn’t want to remember. He’s stuck in this loop, this horrible cycle, this tearing grief in a world with no God.

I was told that this was an atheistic look at grief, but I was not ready for the complete lack of God in the movie. Charlie wasn’t even angry at God for what He’d done. The question never came up. Stuff happens and you adjust or you don’t. God is not part of the equation; He’s not even in the math book. And that is why Charlie’s life is tragic. His suffering is pointless, meaningless. He has nothing to hang any hope on other than his friends and they let him down.

Because I was already feeling down and contemplative thinking about death without Jesus I thought I’d watch One Last Thing, a movie about a sixteen year old boy, Dylan, dying of brain cancer. He seems very cool with dying. He jokes about it, he talks about it, he stares it in the face and doesn’t flinch. But underneath he is angry and terrified. I would be scared too if I were him in his world.

The movie gives three options for life after death- your soul ends and you rot underground, you get to go to a loosely defined ‘better place’, and or you get reincarnated. Those are not good options. If I had to choose of course I would choose a ‘better place’, but the movie doesn’t actually make any decisions about what happens to Dylan. The question is left open.

These two movies together left me deeply sad. This is life in world where God is not. This is life and death and mourning with no hope or meaning. I’ve seen it up close and I can tell you it really is as bad as all that. But at the same time this is art doing what it’s supposed to. The movies asked questions and showed world views. They made me think and feel someone else’s world. And the movies, though not made by Christians, did what Christian art should do which is to point me to Jesus and to remind me why His way is the best possible way to live.

I give Reign Over Me four out of four stars. It was fantastic in composition, heart breaking in story, and outstanding in acting.

I give One Last Thing three out of four stars. It was a good story, but I felt like it got distracted from sometimes and wandered off. They made the characters real like people, but sometimes that meant that at times they were just annoying. Authentic to be sure, but this is the movies, my boy.