Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The Lord of the Rings is meant for theaters. It was astounding to see the extended version of the Fellowship on the big screen. Yes, it was really long. And, yes, I've seen it dozens of times, but it was amazing nonetheless. After I see the other two, I'll write about them more comprehensively.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Prayers For Bobby

I want to get back into reviewing movies I’ve seen. Digesting them on paper for others to help with the processing.

Prayers for Bobby was mostly sad. And also very real. Not just in the sense that it was based on a true story, but that it mirrored my life in some ways. I could see some of my mother in Sigourney Weaver. And that simultaneously discouraged me and gave me hope.

Sigourney Weaver’s character undergoes quite a drastic paradigm shift. The movie is about her and not the character of Bobby, though he is surely the center.

I will probably spoil the movie from here on out, fair warning.

So Bobby comes from a rather large and very loving Christian family. A very Christian family. He and his brother and two sisters quote Bible verses with their mother and seem genuinely close and happy. But Bobby is actually rather unhappy, as he comes to the realization that he may be gay and what that means to the family dynamic.

I remember that feeling well. Struggling over what I’d been taught my entire life, and what I had begun to feel. I did not know how to reconcile my past with my present to pick my future. I knew all the verses. I knew all of my mother’s arguments.

My family was nowhere near as close as the family in the film, but we were just as devout I think.

My mother, like Sigourney Weaver’s character, tried to convince me that I was wrong by using the Bible. She insisted that I had a choice and that it could be really simple with God’s help.

But I, like Bobby, found that it wasn’t a choice at all. And God wasn’t making anything less difficult.

Ultimately, Bobby cannot deal with the pressure on all sides. He knows that he is gay. He love another guy. He also loves his family. He goes a way I’ve only barely entertained.

His mother has a very hard time with her son’s suicide. She believes that he died a sinner and therefore could be in hell. Yet, she knows her son to be a genuinely good person. And so she has a huge struggle to come tot terms with the fact that God can still love and save homosexuals.

That scene was the most powerful of the film. When the mother realizes, that she, and her harsh beliefs, were what drove her son to take his life.

From that point onward, the film was hopeful. Sigourney Weaver’s character becomes a member of PFLAG and marches in honor of the memory of her son.

I am debating whether or not I should recommend this film to my parents. I don’t want them to think that I am in any way suicidal, as I certainly am not and really have never been. But I do want them to see how some of their arguments do much more harm than good. I think that my dad would understand. I think that my mother would just think it was gross propaganda.