As it is in Heaven

The Lent season is upon us and for any Catholic, it's a time of reflection, reconciliation with God, reconciliation with lost loved ones and penance. And for some reason, during the past 2 weeks, the movies I watched were religious themed. And after attending Mass this morning, it seemed even more poignant.

"As it is in Heaven" is a Swedish film and directed by Kay Pollock. The scenery of Sweden is absolutely stunning. The story is about Daniel, a world famous conductor who has fallen ill with heart disease and can no longer conduct full orchestras and was forced into retirement. On a whim, he decides to return to the remote village in northern Sweden where he was born. He has no family nor any connections left there, but he decides to go back there anyways and bought the old elementary school house as his residence. People have long forgotten him and his family, due to heavy bullying for his musical talents, his mother moved them out of there when he was 7 years old and he has never returned since. His childhood dream was to use music to open people's hearts and after conducting for some of the most famous orchestras in the world, he failed to achieve this dream. It was all too commercial and not enough about music for him. The townspeople know that he's a big shot in the classical musical world and is flattered that he chose to come to this small village to retire--not knowing that he's really from there. The local pastor asks him to be the cantor (choir director) of their local church, he declined at first but reluctantly agrees in the end. The choir only has a measly 6 members but it soon grows.

Though this village is small, it's a microcosm of the larger world. You have the insecure town bully Arne, making fun of everyone (including his mentally challenged cousin and taunting him when he wets himself), the alcoholic and abusive husband Conny with his battered wife, Gabriella--which everyone watches her get beat up and does nothing, you have the humorless, self-righteous old spinster Siv, lecturing everyone on morality at every turn, the pastor who secretly stashes porn in his home and the repressed wife wife and you have Lena, the pretty young girl whom everyone envies or despises because she is kind hearted, lively, free spirited and beautiful. Her own townspeople watch her fall madly in love with a married doctor with two children in Stockholm, while they knew the whole time he was married with a family. No one even had the decency to tell her, the just watched her behave like a fool for two years until the charade was up and the doctor had to return home, and she is now branded a 'slut' by Siv. She thought these people were her friends. We all know someone like everyone described above in our lives. Just like the town tramp, there is one in every town. It was while conducting this small choir group Daniel achieved his boyhood dream of opening people's heart with music and he realized that all he had to do was go 'home' to achieve this elusive dream that evaded him his whole international career. It was the simple village life and the simple townspeople that inspired him to be his best. The people in the choir had none of the sophistication nor musical training of all the great musicians he worked with on the world stage but it was what he needed to achieve his dream.

The other two movies I revisited lately are "The End of the Affair" written by Graham Greene and "Brideshead Revisited" written by Evelyn Waugh, it takes a reluctant Catholic and an Anglican (who later converted to Catholicism) to express the core and essence of the Catholic faith. Since the the English Reformation, Catholics in England have dwindled to just a small minority. As a result, Catholics are viewed with curiosity and suspicion--this is especially poignant in Brideshead Revisited. The aristocratic Marchamain family's Catholic faith sticks out like a sore thumb in their social circle, they are viewed with suspicion especially because Lady Marchmain is so devout. The message of these two novels are once a Catholic, always a Catholic, no matter how much you resist it. When God's Grace visits you, you cannot and will not reject it because you know it's good and right. The Catholic religion unlike Protestantism, has a profound hold on the person, being baptized a Catholic, God will always find a way to bring you home, even if you are not ready to come home, you will follow because you know God is good.