The Current
Director: Nikita Zubarev. Cast: B Bradenton Harper, Blade Yocum, Dariush Moslemi, David Harper, Jana Lensing (2014. 85 minutes)
This is a story of growing up through pain and loss and coming to understand the meaning of faith. Teenager Jake’s parents want to protect the boy from exposure to city violence and delinquency in Chicago. The rebellious Jake openly opposes his parents’ attempts to relocate to rural life. He hates to lose his friends and also his favorite baseball events. The family moves to the banks of Providence River in rural Minnesota. Jake chafes at the work he is assigned, but does it all the same. His meeting with the neighbour Peter Owens brightens up his dreary life. Peter had lost his mother two years back and lived with his father, Brian, in a Christian community. Peter’s positive influence on the mischievous Jake draws him closer to Christian faith. Enjoying many boyish adventures together in the forest, life turns upside down when Peter is drowned in the river while swimming and Jake fails to save him. This changes his life forever. Brian, deeply wounded in spirit by the loss of his whole family, rejects God and shuts himself off from the church. Jake hasn’t forgotten the lessons in faith learned from Peter. From the local pastor he is inspired by the story of Horatio Spafford, who lost his fortune and his children but found God’s will and wrote the famous hymn “It’s Well with My Soul.” Jake wins back the hurt Brian during the visit to his friend’s grave on Peter’s birthday. Afterwards, Brian asks bitterly: How can a God that claims to be a loving father do this to him, taking his wife and son away? Jake tells the grieved father: “God… reveals to us one day at a time.” With his newfound faith, Jake tells Brian to trust God and live like the river, ‘to “go with the flow” of God’s plan. They both will see Peter again if they trust God’s will. Brian returns to life. Jake later becomes a pastor. He realizes that, though he could not save Peter from his death, Peter did save him.
NOTE FROM GIGY:
Pls note: Since there are two other movies with the same name, care may be taken to see that the right poster for this one is identified. Note the director when browsing!
Molokai: The Story of Father Damien
Director: Paul Cox. Cast: David Wenham, Peter O’Toole, Sam Neill, Derek Jacobi, Kris Kristofferson (1999. 109 minutes)
A faithful depiction of the story of “the martyr of charity” canonized in 2009. Fr Damien, a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, was working in Honolulu when he heard of the need for a priest to serve the needs of the lepers deported to Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai. People dreaded going there, since it was a quarantine settlement where lepers were cast away for life. The authorities treated them like animals. On his arrival there in 1872, a scenario of utter human misery – humans of all ages physically, spiritually and morally ravaged by leprosy, destitution and death—greeted Damien. He would rebuild the abandoned church all alone. Then he planted trees with the help of the lepers to buffer the strong ocean winds, and tried to care for their spiritual and physical needs as best he could.
Initially Damien has to face resistance from his beneficiaries too. He strikes up a friendship with a dying English man, once a health official, now cast away because of leprosy. Damien is his comfort in his dying moments. Failing to find someone to go to Molokai, his sympathetic bishop personally visits Damien to hear his confession. However, because of the fear of infection, the captain of the ship would not allow the Bishop to land on the island or allow Damien to board the ship. So, Damien has to shout his confession to the bishop on board the ship from a boat. Damien’s attempts to get medicine and basic comforts are ignored by authorities. He gets world attention through the press when the sympathetic Princess of Hawaii visits the village. But it only infuriates the Hawaiian administration that thinks of shutting the place. Damien has a long struggle ahead to get nuns to come there to nurse the sick. When he gets leprosy, he identifies himself with the sufferings of the crucified Christ, and does not bother to seek any comfort other than what his people get. Once he is forced into a humiliating physical examination by a doctor in front of an official on grounds of a false theory that this disease is the result of sexual misconduct. On his deathbed his wish is granted, when two nuns—Mother Marianne Cope and Sister Leopoldina Burns—arrive to continue Damien’s work.
Prof Gigy Joseph
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