Just a quick note on a great movie, Lars and the Real Girl. For those who prefer to get their theology through the movies, this isn't a bad place to go. As with all good stories, the "points" are made artfully and indirectly, and saying that the movie is theological is only so if a theologian is watching it. Still, it is a moving and quirky story.
I won't ruin the movie by reviewing it for you. I will tell you that it involves a young man (played brilliantly by Ryan Gosling) forming an imaginary relationship with a life-sized doll he buys on the internet. The movie features an entire community willing to build a relationship with this doll for the sake of Lars' pain, grief related to emotional loss in his family. This community is an exotic setting, as fantastical as any Indian Jones or Star Wars movie, because it depicts a community where people allow others the space necessary to nurse the fictions closest to their pain until they don't need them anymore. Salvation.
I will admit to crying in three movies: Old Yellar' (if you didn't cry, you're a sociopath), A River Runs Through It, and Lars and the Real Girl. I've cried in others, but not ones I'd admit to.
4 comments:
How about
Saving Private Ryan?
Lonesome Dove?
Those are tear jerkers.
I'm sure these are tear worthy movies for some, and I'm not saying I didn't cry (well, I didn't cry in Private Ryan for sure), but they don't rise to the level of being able to admit crying.
Thanks for reading.
Mark
I saw Lars and the Real Girl when it was first released on the Indy/Art House theater circuit. I too cried during the movie and left the theater determined to show this movie in church as soon as the DVD came out. We screened it last month and many folks enjoyed it. I used the clip of the church discussion over Lars and "Bianca" during my sermon the following Sunday.
The Cukrowski's showed this wonderfully produced film for one of their college film nights. I have recommended it to more people the last two months than any other film I have seen, and that list is quite large.
The scene where the brother is confessing to his wife about abandoning Lars reached in and got me where I live more than any other film has.
I recently watched Elizabethtown, and it hit me in similar ways - not to mention the soundtrack!
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