The Perfect Stranger
Director: Jefferson Moore * Cast: Pamela Brumley, Jefferson Moore, Tom Luce. 2005.
Nikki Cominsky works for a Chicago law firm. She and her husband Matt are on the point of separation. Neither of them is seriously religious. In an attempt to revive their mutual intimacy, Nikki fixes a romantic dining out in an exotic restaurant with her husband. She is disappointed when Matt announces that he has a baseball game to attend. When the irate Nikki reaches her office, a surprise awaits her. She is intrigued by mysterious a dinner invitation on her table. She is invited to the same restaurant by someone who calls himself Jesus Christ. She thinks that this is possibly a proselytizing attempt by some local church activists. On second thoughts it seems to Nikki that her husband is trying to make amends by offering a surprise dinner in disguise and decides to go. Awaiting her is a total stranger who introduces himself as Jesus Christ. When she tries to leave, the man’s persuasive manner holds her back. Nikki enjoys the dinner as his guest and is soon drawn into a life changing conversation. They engage in a series of questions and answers session in which the man clarifies Nikki’s doubts about the truth of Christian faith, and her own personal life. Gradually her acquired skepticism is stripped away, when Jesus explains the truths of Christianity and the issues that the modern world raises. Nikki is overwhelmed to know that the man knows her own life story closely. She confesses to the inner wounds relating to the untimely loss of her beloved father at 13. Je sus explains why. Nikki is told of God’s love which is so deeply personal. Jesus explains the condition of her life and about afterlife, the meaning of love expressed in crucifixion. He tells her that he had been sent to answer the troubling questions of her life. At the end Nikki notices the nail scars of the crucifixion on the man’s wrists, confirming his identity. As they part, when asked for his address, Jesus writes a note on the back of Nikki’s visiting card. It is a quote from the Bible: Revelation 3:20 which holds the key to the central idea of the movie. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
Edith Stein: Stations of an Exceptional Life.
Director: Dieter Scholetterbeck * Cast: Heidemarie Rohweder, Maria Mittler, Grethe Wurm, Rotraut Rieger, Christian Schneller. 1982. 90 minutes
This powerful German/English docudrama narrates the life story of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, (Edith Stein) whose journey from the life of an atheistic Jewish girl to Catholic martyrdom and sainthood captures our imagination. The narrative unfolds through Edith’s own words, commentaries on her life and thought by those who originally knew her in various ways, besides footages from the two world wars that marked the crucial points of her life. Edith Stein was one of the most remarkable philosophers and educators of the 20th century Europe. Born in 1891 in a middle class orthodox Jewish Family in Breslau, Poland, she and her siblings were brought up by a widowed mother. In her teens Edith was an independent minded atheist and a passionate advocate of women’s rights in Germany. She studied psychology in Breslau University but soon proceeded to Gottingen enamored of its intellectual life. There she engaged in heated discussions on philosophy and religious doctrines and excelled as a scholar. She studied under the great phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, who took her as his assistant. Edith became a Catholic, moved by the writings of Teresa of Avila. When the World War I broke out, she served as a nurse with the Red Cross and was decorated for bravery. After the war she joined the Carmelite order. Giving up her university career in 1933, she became a Discalced Carmelite and lived in a monastery in the Netherlands. In 1942, the Nazis overran the Netherlands. Sister Theresa was arrested there and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp along with her sister Rosa where they were gassed to death. As they are taken away, Edith comforts her sister saying “Rosa, we are going for our people.” In 1998 Theresa Benedicta of the Cross was canonized saint and martyr.
Prof Gigy Joseph
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