Forgiveness on the screen

Seeing as spring is more or less here, I decided to have a bit of a clear out of my film magazines.

Five years of back copies has taken up valuable space that is now needed for toys and baby clothes. As I flicked through the front covers, I was struck by the range of themes that the mainstream Hollywood films use to woo us into the cinemas: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Matrix may all use special effects and multi-release strategies to keep us interested but they also run with themes and ideas that transcend space or Middle Earth and connect with human everyday experience. Love, grief, self-doubt, heroism are all present in many blockbusters and often linking them all together is the theme of forgiveness. In order for relationships to continue in the midst of the immense stresses of the plotlines, forgiveness needs to be alive and well. Frodo and Sam need to forgive each other throughout their journey with the tricksy Gollum, Ron has to forgive Harry for his failures in friendship and so on.

Powerful theme

Forgiveness is even more powerful as a theme when the characters must forgive their enemies. In the film The Interpreter (2005), starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, there is an interesting proposal for helping you to forgive the murderer of your loved ones. We learn that in the fictional African ‘Ku’ tribe, a ritual is held a year after the murder. The criminal is bound and taken by boat to the middle of a lake while the family of the victim stands on the shore. The murderer is then thrown into the lake, unable to swim. The only way that he will survive is if the family swim out to save him. The theory promoted by the film is that this action cures the family of grief, enabling them to continue their lives in peace, whereas letting the murderer drown may satisfy their revenge, but it will cause them to grieve for the rest of their lives. Kidman’s character, Silvia, has had her entire family killed by a heartless President and holds a gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger. Penn’s character pleads with her, saying, ‘If you kill him, you destroy your own life.’ The end of all movies must close with a sustainable equilibrium for the audience to go away satisfied and it seems that forgiveness can give us that through bringing emotional health and well-being to our heroes and heroines at the end of their toil.