the emma thompson effect

It's a lot like the butterfly effect, but less complicated. This past week we've watched two movies with Emma Thompson in them (Stranger than Fiction and Love Actually, both tremendous and especially well-written. D and I have decided that any movie she chooses is excellent, and will watch them all faithfully. The HP movies, where she plays Professor Trelawney, are not necessarily cinematic brilliance, but they stem from a literary mind, so they're the popcorn movie exceptions. The cast for the HP movies is pretty much a who's-who of British cinema anyhow, whether the kids are good actors or not.

Both of these came out a while back, and everyone I talked to really loved the latter movie and were surprised I hadn't seen it. I love British comedy, Colin Firth is dreamy (though his movie choices are not quite up to Thompson's par), and Hugh Grant is equally charming. Add Alan Rickman (another personal favorite) the badass villain from Serenity, Chewitel Ejiofor, and a bunch more brilliant people and you have a fantastic movie. Even Skeletor--I mean Keira Knightley--makes a creditable appearance in the film.

I usually judge the quality of a movie on whether or not I think about it for days or weeks afterward. If I can just see it and be done, it's not much of a movie. Love actually has been on my mind for a week, and the relationship between Thompson's and Rickman's characters has especially hit me. Initially, it looks like Rickman is an older single man, boss of an ad agency who has an extremely forward secretary who he's just managing to dodge--but not rebuff--advances from. Then another shot shows Emma Thompson asking her husband about a Christmas present and lo and behold, it's Rickman sitting there.

I'm used to being surprised or shocked in my entertainment choices--shows like Lost, Buffy, and Firefly all use those "Nu-UHHHHH!" moments, when everyone screams out "holy CRAP! I thought it was a frat house but it's just a cover for a secret government military research facility??" Stuff like that. Even with this diet of shock and paradigm-shifting, it's difficult for me to think of a more shocking moment than the revelation of Rickman's relationship to Thompson. The movie continues with the slow spiral down into very hurtful actions by Rickman which put his marriage in jeopardy. After being confronted with his betrayal, he says he's a fool, and Thompson says yes, and you've made the life I live foolish as well. It's the perfect way to describe the true nature of unfaithfulness, the fragile agreement that marriages are founded upon and how easily it can be broken.

I would much rather a character in a movie die than to be betrayed or unfaithful to their spouse. It's more horrific than any slasher movie, and hits so much closer to home. It doesn't help if that actor is one who normally plays such loyal, single-minded characters--even Snape is incredibly loyal to the very end, though we don't really see it in the movies so much.

I guess I've thought a lot about this lately because we're coming up on our 10th wedding anniversary (July, but still it's this year), I've recently listened to several sermons on marriage and divorce, and it's also the same time of year that one of our closest friends left his wife and 3 kids. He was our best man at the wedding, and had been someone I looked up to--a Christian, married for quite a while for someone his age, and seemed like he had his heart in the right place. Even when things were going south, it really didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary was going on--every marriage has troubles, I thought, and this is no different. I wish with all my heart that I had been right, I wish that his conscience had not been so decimated, and I wish he had had the balls--or the desire--to ask for help, for anything. Instead, he just bailed. Instead of acknowledging that adulthood is difficult and requires self-sacrifice, he made up some lame philosophical excuses and turned tail and ran. I couldn't believe it. To some degree, I still cannot believe anyone could do such a thing. It's not just a betrayal of his wife and children, which is more than enough treachery, it's a rejection of an entire life of friends, family, God, everything. And everyone has to endure the consequences of that rejection, not just the coward who perpetrated it. It doesn't end, and can't end.

What does Christ-like forgiveness look like in this situation? How can one approach anything close to healing, when the bitterness and anger are still so present four years later, and he shows no sign of even acknowledging his guilt? Once in a while I have dreams about him, most of which involve me either screaming at and punching him or living with some sort of truce that I explain in the dream: "I really hate you but somehow I have to sit next to you in this college auditorium, even though there are tons of empty seats." Recently, my vivid horrific dreams have had one reprieve of sorts; I dreamed that I had forgiven him completely. I wasn't even disgusted at myself for it.

When I have read about forgiveness, many times people have said the key was to try and fathom how much God had to forgive you to accept you as his child. To have a very sober judgment of yourself and your own baseness and treachery, and to remember that God's righteousness is so far above what even the most wonderful people can attain. I feel also that if I deceive myself enough, I could believe that I would never ever do something so low and terrible to people I loved. But I know better than that. I really am capable of doing far worse, though God's grace has restrained the evil in me. Instead of depressing me, somehow that knowledge helps me to look with more grace on other people. I am still angry and bitter with this man, but it feels like I've taken a step to release myself from the grip of the old pain, if that makes any sense. Someone said that forgiveness was setting a prisoner free, and realizing the prisoner was you. Maybe one day I'll talk to him again and not feel like throwing up. Here's hoping.