It actually reminded me of a film I watched earlier this summer. Some people I know back home shot a film called For Ashes, about human-trafficking. After three years of work, they finally had their premiere showing this summer, which I attended. I thought the film was good until it got to the end. I won't explain the whole story, but I'll say that the only thing we got resembling a happy ending was the main protagonist accepting Christ. There was no closure to any of the other plot lines. The villains seemed to have won. One of the former good guys was about to sell his own sister. Another had just been murdered. There was no sign that things would get any better for any of the characters.
On one hand, I can see why they would choose to end it that way. Having the good guys bring down the trafficking ring would have been too idealistic; it would have been too easy. But the ending left me feeling hopeless. The hopelessness: that's what I didn't like. I don't need to see them solve all their problems. Real life doesn't always work like that. I understand that. But I feel like the story should at least end on a note of hopefulness.
I felt the same way about Small Hands, thought not as strongly. There was lots of loss and mourning. And then it ended. No answers, no silver lining, no hope; it just ended with mourning.
It's not that I can't appreciate the depiction of hardship. I just feel like the story is missing something if it stops there. And as a Christian, I think if anyone has an answer to pain/hardship/loss, it's us. Does it do any good to empathize with sorrow without giving hope? Are these just examples of artists rightly saying what they feel, while I ask what they ought?
I've never seriously suffered, so I can't know how films like these affect people who have. Does it help?
Good questions Johnathan. I personally find hope in the beauty of how this film is crafted. Before me it's the only response that doesn't feel fabricated to make me feel better. . .and somehow it makes me feel better.
ReplyDeleteI think you make a really good point about the fact that 'Small Hands' seemed hopeless. You are right: it was. It didn't offer any solutions, and sometimes that's hard for us to swallow. It's uncomfortable. It doesn't feel right. We live in a fallen world, a world where horrible things happen. I'm assuming that we are all aware of that. So why on earth are we shocked when we are faced with tragedy? Why does it feel wrong to us? These are hard questions to ask and even harder to answer. And I don't have the answer, which I know is what you were looking for when you commented on the lack of hope. I will leave you though with this thought by G.K. Chesterton: "As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all."
ReplyDeleteI have dealt with tragedy in my life. More than some, but less than others. I personally found 'Small Hands' comforting in an odd sort of way. Not because it offered a solution to pain, but because I could relate to it. The sadness it evoked was familiar, maybe that's why I was comfortable with it. Or maybe, perhaps, I found a pinprick of hope in the reminder that I wasn't alone in experiencing loss.