Tiffany Noyes, Midrash in Film

Midrash is a dramatization or interpretation of scripture, a way of illustrating or helping us understand it better. What better way to do that than in film? In illustrating the first commandment “Tho shalt have no other gods before me” we see graphic imagery that help us understand what it means to have other gods before Him. The father in the story in general relies on things that can be measured, manufactured or proven. He loves rational thought and disregards anything beyond the physical world. It struck me that his “god” could have been knowledge, or his work, but its interesting to see his great love for his son that seems to go beyond the rational and measured confines of his world. When playing a chess game with his son, he smiles and has a glimmer in his eye as his son outwits “the system” by doing something spontaneous! So his dad appreciated the outwitting of a system in that circumstance. His safe zone generally fell into the physical, and what could be proved. This is in stark contrast to his sister who, when hugging her nephew, asks what he feels, and when he responds “love” she tells him that's where God is. She takes the physical world lightly and sees right past it into the spiritual world. She isn't very impressed with the technology and even cleverly asks her nephew “can it tell you what your mom's dreaming?” Instead she's a good Roman Catholic who believes there's more than just the physical realities at hand. In the end of the movie when the father starts to get scared that his son might be dead, he starts counting “one, two, three...” these numbers were something he was sure of, they were a comfort to him. But then after he did find out his son was dead, he lost it! He went to a shrine of Mary and the Christ child and (some would say) desecrated it! He overturned the table with the candles. This however was a step in the right direction for this agnostic father, for now he is acknowledging the existence of God, even if he is angry at Him. In turn, we see the beautiful image of the wax running down Mary's cheek, implying that she feels his pain. And he grabs the ice produce by the holy water fount and holds it to his face, another bittersweet moment. His child was killed by falling through the ice, and he turns around and holds this “holy ice” to his face while grieving.