The Story Reaches Its Lowest Point (I)

The Story Reaches Its Lowest Point (I)
JUDGES 19:1-30

One of the Oscar contenders at the time I write is the movie Precious, the story of a teenager whose life is characterized by systematic abuse in the context of her family, including rape and incest on the part of her father and physical and emotional abuse by her angry mother. It’s a movie that forces people to face hideous truths about what some people’s lives can be like. Although made in Hollywood, in terms of genre it’s not really a Hollywood movie. While it contains glimmers of hope, it’s more about survival than about triumph. It doesn’t undo the horrific nature of its story by having Precious emerge triumphant against all the odds of her background and experience. In this sense it’s not a “feel good” movie, and reviewers commented that therefore it might not work at the box office or in the Oscars race (though it did win an Oscar). We don’t go to the movies to have our faces rubbed in reality. We get that outside the theater. We go there to escape reality...