Why I Cry In Movies

The other night, I threw in Slumdog Millionaire. Didn't watch the whole thing. Didn't want to.


Skip to the final scenes of the movie.

"I don't know where they've taken her . . . "

"I went on the show because I thought she might be watching . . . "

Tear.

Phone a friend . . .

Cue Latika

"Hello?"

Camera on Jamal - that look on his face, hearing her voice again, the impossible becoming possible set against the backdrop of his impossible run on the show.

Salim's sacrifice - redemption is available to all.

The rendez-vous at the train station - her shame at her scar, his tender kissing of it.

Roll credits. Jai Ho.


K, I took maybe 30 seconds to type that (then correcting some spelling and what not) . . . but I think that that is a good encapsulation of what it is that makes me cry in SM.

And now, the why of it all . . .

I wasn't made for good byes. I wasn't made for the mundane, for mediocrity. I see beauty in the ordinary, hope in despair - the way I see the world is just different. If you know me at all, then you know enough to know that I should be bitter, should hold a grudge. I just can't though. There is so much that happens everyday, all these little miracles, that seeing something truly good happen when there is no reason to think that it should is enough to touch me deeply and elicit tears as a response.

Latika is scarred - her beauty is marred, at least in her own eyes. Yet Jamal still wants no one but her, still sees her when no one else really does. That scar? Nothing a kiss can't fix . . .

Mike and I were talking recently about what resurrection life is like, how Jesus' body was still scarred even after he came back to life. And he said something I found intriguing. Help me out here if I get it wrong, k Mike? But I believe you said that our wounds don't go away, but their message does - that everything is redeemed, even the meaning of our scars.

The story of Latika's scar, for instance, begins with abuse at the hands of a man who knows not what love is, but ends at the hands of her one true love.

I have been scarred by abandonments in life, of people who needed to be there at key times being absent. The most significant one is that of my father, and though our relationship is better now then either of us may have dreamed possible, the damage is real. The message of THAT wound, though, is that there IS a Father, One Who doesn't leave. There IS unconditional love to be found. And it is in the times that I feel the wound most acutely that I draw most closely to that love.



I've been there before, too, countless times. Doing something just because maybe, just maybe, she'd be watching. The "she" changes with time, but the desire to make desire known doesn't. Or hasn't yet. And as I grow more aware of the Sacred Romance that breathes life into every day, I more eagerly anticipate my part in an image of that romance . . .

Until then, and hopefully long afterwards, I will cry in movies, not necessarily for what occurs on the screen so much as what occurs in me while watching it.