.: closure and hope :.

Last night in my film class, we watched Fritz Lang's 1931 black and white film "M" as an example of pre-film noir. The premise of the film is the presense and capture of a psychopathic child murderer (quite a subject to deal with back then, as it would be even today). The film is in German (it was actual the first large talking film in Germany) with English subtitles. The version that we watched was somewhat grainy, but there is supposedly a remake on the near horizon.



The reason that I bring up this film is because of the ambiguity of the ending. This, like many other popular films, leaves the conclusion up to the audience's imagination. Now I don't mind this when the plot concludes with the man and woman finally discovering each other in love, or even when the hero dies for the sake of something greater than us all. I don't mind at that point being left to fill in the lines and envision life after the story. But in this case, not knowing if the criminal got what he truly deserved for his heinous crimes, I was left with a space in my heart that demanded that I know that he was rightly punished (i.e., a life for a life). Otherwise, in my limited understanding of how to truly critic a film, this one would be considered incomplete to say the least.



I love happy endings! I love where things just simply work out! Don't get me wrong - I want incredible tension... I want the grandest of risks... I want improbable odds. But in the end, I want to see a movie where everything is brought together, and I am offered incredible hope and closure that speaks of the life that I was meant to live (life before the Fall). To not be given that leaves me with a sense that I have just been cheated by the director and film crew.



A friend of mine commented to the fact that he loved the ambiguity of Lang's film because that is the way that life really is. Life is messy. Life is unfair. Life is brief to those whose lives seem noble and kind to the cruelest of men. And THAT is why he liked it? Because it showed life as it truly is? That is precisely why I HATE films like that. Because I love movies for their ability to speak of life as we do NOT know it. I love movies because they speak to my own story (i.e., life as I experience it) and they tell me, "There is something greater out there, Dave! You were built for glory and beauty and the richest of loves!". For a movie to simply remind me of the beautiful letdown that this world has turned out to be is for it to do nothing other than further the demoralizing nature and agenda of our culture and our world.



I want a movie to call me out of myself, to lift my spirits, and cast a vision that I can seek for - one bigger than the ones that I so often am okay with settling for. Movies are made to draw me "further up and further in" (to quote Lewis), to call me back to the Kingdom that I would gladly lay my life down for (especially on the heels of watching a strong film), and to offer hope. To simply remind me of the brutish nature of life is to leave me with little more than despair and discouragement.