I love weird movies. I love the movies that peel away the veneer of daily life and really dig around in what we're all really like. Little Miss Sunshine is one of those movies; it's characters are multi-dimesional, it's plot is surprising and moves at a brisk pace, and when the movie is over you feel like you've learned something about life that will help you deal with it a little better. That is quite an accomplishment considering that Steve Carell's character is suicidal; "Duane", the teenage boy, reads Nietzche for fun and has taken a vow of silence; his Dad (played by Greg Kinnear) is the annoying 9-steps to self-help guy you hope to avoid at your company's convention; the Grandfather is addicted to heroine and curses like a sailor; and the Mom of the family is understandably just struggling to cope - sneaking cigarettes when no one else is looking. Everyone in this movie is struggling to get by, and there are no easy answers.
The true star of the show is Olive - a 9 year old rather, ummmm, homely-looking young lady who is convinced that she is really destined to be a beauty queen. Her belief is so pure, and her devotion so complete - including countless hours of rehearsal on a secret dance routine choreographed by her Grandfather, that the rest of her family finds hope and meaning in helping her become the beauty queen that she knows she can be.
There's a lot to say about this movie, and by the end of it I really felt like I had been blessed with a candid and truthful expression of a lot of the feelings we all feel but are either too ashamed or too committed to holding everything together to let out. More than anything, I found it refreshing that there was no one who was superhuman in this movie. They all had sins that were laid bare in front of the lens, and yet each of these people had moments in which they acted with dignity, humility, and honor - even if the outcomes of their intentions were derailed. It kind of reminds me of Luther's comment about Christians: we are both saint and sinner at the same time.
It's funny, but of all the people in the movie I most wanted to hang out with the suicidal character and the teenage boy who wouldn't talk and said (on a notepad) that he "hated everyone". In the moments when the two of them were together, there was no pretense in their conversations, and there was a genuinely human connection between them that ensured that they worked to protect each other. Upon Carell's first night "home" in Duane's house, Duane is forced to share a room with his suicidal Uncle. Before going to bed Duane scribbles on his pad, "Don't kill yourself tonight, okay?". Carell responds, "Not tonight, not on your watch", and a fast friendship is born. They were both DESPERATE for some real human interaction, and the teenager's concern for Carell, although it was masked behind pen, paper, and the implicit assumption that he only cared because he would get in trouble if something happened, shone through all his angst and led to an unlikely and much-needed friendship.
I sometimes wish "Church" people could be this free and open with each other - to reach out at the risk of exposing our sin just so that we are not alone in it. A great many people have the perception that people who go to Church are "faking it" when we're in "service" on sunday and we're really more authentic to our true nature during the rest of the week. How sad...
We all need some kind of public face to get us through the times that are just plain awful - but sometimes the facade gets worn more than our true personality. We become the "perfect Wife", or the "Jock", or the "CEO", or the "Geek", or the "Perfect Husband", or the "Coach", or the... You get the idea. My idea of Christian friendship is one where those of us who follow Jesus let our friends in to our joys and our pains, and we do so in a spirit of trust and faith. While we don't need to revel in our sin, we do need people to walk with us in our brokenness, and to be there with a real human touch and word when we are sick of ourselves, or when we feel we are becoming our facade.
My dream as a Pastor is to grow a Church that welcomes people as they are. I would love it if people partnered with Lifesong and built friendships that helped them become more like Jesus in the midst of their struggles. It is my hope that the teenage boy in the movie who wore the shirt that said, "Jesus Was Wrong" would sense that Jesus was about much more than "right or wrong" at Lifesong, and that Jesus welcomes and even beckons people like him into His Kingdom. God is given a lot of room in which to work when someone lives with their brokenness on his sleeve (or on their chest) and there is less of a facade to have to dig through (although many times black-dyed hair and depressing slogans are a thicker facade than perfectly done nails, obscenely-white teeth, and a perfectly waxed Mercedes).
In the end, the family works together, through and in spite of their faults in order to get Olive to her pageant. Her innocence is kept in tact despite some truly horrible events that they endure together, and they begin the journey home. But the audience is left with the knowledge that there would be more hard times to come, and that the beautiful ending moments would last just a few moments - and I felt hopeful anyway...
Find more hope at www.lifesongchristiancommunities.org :)
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1 comment:
Good post.
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