I love to watch European films. European directors do not shy away from the tragic ending, if it is the appropriate one. You can feel complete despair at the end of some of these films but inwardly, you know that it is utterly appropriate. The Americans have great difficulty with this and have to 'sugar the pill'. This explains why so many Hollywood films descend into schmaltz. I recently saw an interview with the people who made the Walkers crisps ads featuring Gary Linekar. Walkers is owned by American company Pepsico. The British marketing company were explaining to the American executives the ad's concept of Gary, local boy made good, coming back to his home town of Leicester to much adulation. The Americans liked it but for one point - the ending was deemed unacceptably cruel when Linekar steals a child's bag of crisps. Could he not give the crisps back to the child at the last minute? It took some persuasion to convince them that the British audience would get the humour and that this was the appropriate ending.
Last Saturday I watched a Spanish film called Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside) by director Alejandro Amenabar who has since achieved note in Hollywood with his film The Others. Mar Adentro was based on true events and tells the story of a man, Ramón Sampedro, who had an accident when diving into the sea which left him quadraplegic. We join the story after Ramón has endured twenty eight years of disability, paralysed from the neck downwards. It follows his fight to end his own life but it is not a courtroom drama, rather a close study of human relationships and how we deal with serious illness and disappointments. I didn't feel that the film made any judgements on the ethical debate of assisted suicides but was a very human story. Nor was it a maudlin tale; indeed Ramón was a surprisingly humorous and upbeat character given the serious subject matter of the film. In one scene, Ramón steps out of his bed and walks to his bedroom window. At that point my other half paused the DVD and said to me "Shall we switch it off now and go to bed? It will be a happy ending then." I suspect we have watched too many Hollywood films. Obviously this would be a wholly inappropriate and dissatisfying end. We continued to watch the film and, as expected, it was just a dream scene.
On Sunday morning, much of this was echoed in my mind as the Passion was played out in the Mass and discussed in Fr Simon's homily. Again it resonated in the content of the joint service at 5 o'clock. Imagine if we could freeze-frame history at the point of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Initially it doesn't seem such a bad idea. After all, it was a high point and we all like nothing better than the feel good factor. But you can't live your life, floating six inches above the ground. Nothing was achieved without going through Good Friday, the ultimate low point later in the week. In the twists and turns of the Jesus narrative, it is the appropriate turn of events, unpleasant though it is to us.
May you find the strength this week to live Holy Week to the full, to embrace your brokenness in the cross and emerge fully revived in the Easter experience.
