EDIT: I wrote this whole review before finishing the movie so I wouldn’t spoil the ending. But now after watching to the end I feel I must amend a few things, so I will do so in edits so that you can see the impression I got half way through and then see my impression after seeing it through to the end.
Jeers: The flick has the stereotypical Wise Negro dispensing sage advice to this white man. I found that really irritating.
Actually the “wise negro” is just his co-worker who happens to have a good relationship with his own wife and thinks that what worked for him [counseling] will work for Caleb [the main character]. Unlike typical Holyweird films in this one the white man is not at all moved by the sage advice of his Negro pal. The Negro keeps on trying to counsel Caleb after Caleb very clearly told him counseling was not for him. After a few attempts Caleb informs the Negro that he allowed him a certain amount of liberty with his tongue on the job but that now he was stepping over the line and abusing the tolerance he had shown him. Those aren’t his exact words but that is what it sounded like to me.
EDIT: It turns out that his Negro co-worker professes Christianity. At least I assume it is Christianity. I am not really sure since he never actually quotes the Bible and never says anything distinctly Christian to Caleb. All the advise he gives is of the sort I have heard Uncle Tom Negroes in more mainstream movies give such as “go all out for her, don’t be cheap, buy her only the best” and “a woman is like a flower. If you treat it right it will bloom. If you don’t it will wilt.” That last one Caleb asks him “where’d you get that from?” [he seemed to know right away he wasn’t wise enough to come up with that on his own] to which he responds, “counseling.” So this Negro’s wisdom comes not from the Bible but from marriage counseling and it wasn’t faith in Christ that saved the Negro’s marriage as it was later with Caleb.
Anyway, I am very grateful to the script writers that they didn’t have the Negro preaching the Word or trying to convert Caleb, instead they had his own father do it which to me was what makes the movie so great. How many fathers do that now a days to their grown son? Mine never did. He was kind of a workaholic. But he did show me the example of a good Christian man and later we did talk about our faith after I had found it on my own.
Aside from saving lives and being a good captain at work, he’s a rather unlikable guy. He doesn’t help around the house. He yells at his wife over every little thing. And, he frequently takes a baseball bat to the trash to relieve anger.
This is not what I saw. What I saw was a very likeable guy. That was why it was so hard for him to accept his marriage problems. Because he was so liked and respected by everyone he knew, except his wife.
He doesn’t yell at his wife over every little thing. The movie picks up at a point in his life after he had already been married for 7 years and the impression I got was that it happened very slow and subtle over time and only now at the point we meet him does it sneak up on him as if it just happened all of a sudden.
So now after several years the cumulative effects of an un-Christ-like marriage [not that it was terrible, just not quite up to Biblical Christian standards, so it did take years for the negative effects to accumulate] have come to a head and it is starting to take it’s toll in more obvious ways than it had in the years prior to the point the movie picks up the story at. Such as with shouting matches, not sleeping together, not eating together, not doing anything together and finally divorce papers.
At this point neither husband nor wife really understand what is going on just that they both know something is not right. Both pretty much feel the same way, not enough respect from the other. But both also feel it is the other’s problem not their own. So what is one to do in such a situation?
In a patriarchal society such as the Bible has always been about the responsibility to take action naturally falls to the man of the house. That is why the movie focuses on the man, Caleb, as the main character and focuses on the actions he takes. Not because he is the one in the wrong and his wife shares none of the blame for their problems.
Clearly both are equally in the wrong and suffer the same problem [in my view it can be summed up with one word, “autonomy.” It is an age old problem and one that almost always happens to those without God. They’ve fallen into the age old trap of leading autonomous lives. They need a paradigm shift from stubborn and selfish independence to dependence on God first, and on each other second, and only after those first two are satisfied can there be any room for the third which is self.
[EDIT: Later in the movie when Caleb’s father finally reveals to his son the key to true love, perseverance and patience and in a word, peace, which is Christ in your heart and mind, he echoes my thoughts above almost to the letter. So apparently I got the message exactly as the film producers intended and quite early on at that. ]
It is the man’s job to be mature enough to break the vicious cycle, sacrifice his own pride, selfishness, autonomy, independence, etc. and show his wife the right example to follow, even if he hasn’t been the best example in the past. It is never too late to start. That is basically what this movie is about.
[EDIT: Apparently the patriarchal angle I read into the film was unintended. I still believe it is there but I see now that the producers did not intend to put that in there. And so at the end they turn it around and have the father reveal to his son that he copied the “love dare” in a journal written to Caleb because he knew that was the only way to get him to read and follow it. He reveals to him that it was originally used on him by his wife who was the one who found faith in Christ and who took the “love dare” to save their marriage and it ended with his conversion to the faith. I don’t see what difference it makes though. It doesn’t disprove the Biblical concept of patriarchal family and society. Just because she found God before her husband did does not make Caleb’s dad any less of a patriarch. If anything I would think that if his wife’s conversion was true and she truly believed in the Biblical way then she would expect him to become a true fully mature man of the house and fulfill the role of patriarch of the family as part of his conversion. His wife’s actions do absolutely nothing to support feminism.]
As for the beating up trash cans, how does that make him an unlikeable guy? Sure his neighbor didn’t appreciate the outbursts while he was trying to relax in his back yard. But he took his anger out on the trash so he wasn’t taking it out on his wife and also wasn’t damaging anything of value. Very smart and even kind of noble by todays standards if you ask me. Also each time he saw his neighbor he quickly hid his anger and was clearly embarrassed that his neighbor had seen him lose his cool.
[EDIT: This trashcan bit actually leads into a humorous part at an inspirational moment later on but I won’t spoil that. His neighbor does think Caleb is a nut but his own wife tells him “takes one to know one.” lol
Typical of most movies, it did have some silly things. The fireman spends time looking at a boat on the internet that he is going to buy with his savings. His mother-in-law needs the same savings to buy medical equipment. Yet, bizzarly, that grand selfishness goes unnoticed by his wife and the movie script until the end of the movie
I didn’t find this silly at all. No mention was made until much later in the movie about his mother-in-law needing money for treatment. The impression I got for the first half of the movie was that her condition was unknown and permanent. And really nothing seemed wrong with her other than that she couldn’t speak. I thought maybe she had a stroke at some point and just lost the power to speak or something like that.
They only show her being visited by her daughter, Caleb’s wife, one time throughout the first two thirds of the movie so clearly if we are seeing things from Caleb’s point of view we can be fairly certain he was about as aware of his mother in law’s problem as we the audience are throughout most of the film. So saving up for a boat did not seem like “grand selfishness” to me.
[EDIT: Ok, the money that is needed is for a wheelchair not treatment. Turns out I was right, she did have a stroke and that is what took her power of speech away, and it is permanent. So there is nothing Caleb can do to make her better. But apparently he does know about his wife wanting to get her mom a new wheelchair [she already has an old one by the way]. So it is understandable that Caleb doesn’t feel too bad about not offering to pay for it. When he does pay for it he does so out of love for his wife but he doesn’t do it to show off, he tells the wheelchair sales person not to tell anyone who paid for it. So at first she assumes her doctor friend who is sweet on her must have paid for it. And when she thanks her doctor friend he says it was the least he could do [but I won’t spoil that angle either].
He worked hard for that money and risked his life everyday on the job, saved lives, and his only vice seemed to be internet voyerism and dreaming of owning his own boat some day. He never went out and came home drunk. He spent much of his off time at home on the internet. He may have been looking at things he shouldn’t have [especially considering the fact that his wife is in perfect health, not at all overweight and very attractive] but at least he wasn’t out sleeping around with other women. In fact, it his wife who is on the verge of cheating on him [with a doctor at the hospital she works at] and not the other way around!
[EDIT: I really liked the part when Caleb is wrestling with his own inner demon - the temptation to click on porn site popup ads - and at just the right time he reads his father’s journal warning about parasites and how they will ruin a marriage. One of the parasites mentioned is pornography. What it says about parasites is so true and Caleb’s reaction is classic, it is my favorite part of the movie, I was cheering him on by that point. Again, I won’t spoil it for you.]
Christians should complain about the limp-wristed Christianity of the movie. Far from hating women, you’d think the movie was written by a feminist. One character makes a point of explaining that the “book” was written by a woman, to shame the fireman for assuming a male author. The book provides a 40-day plan with daily tasks along the line of: give her flowers, make her dinner, listen to her, and then pray about it (apparently until you’re motivated to give her bigger flowers).
I don’t know where this guy got this from but what I saw was not a published book, the main character Caleb would never have gone for a self-help book whether it was written by a man or a woman. What it was was a journal written by his father. His father talked his son into promising him to accept the simple easy to follow step by step day by day chores explained in the journal [it is narrated by the voice of his father each time Caleb reads it and his father quotes the Bible frequently to back up what he is asking Caleb to do each day]. It wasn’t written by a woman it was written by his dad. Caleb wouldn’t even listen to his mother give him advice because she sounded too much like his wife and didn’t seem to understand his POV, so he would only talk to his father about this, man to man.
Even if it was written by a woman originally it is all backed up by Bible verses so it would be God’s Word leading a woman to write what she wrote if it was indeed a woman who originally thought up the idea of the “dare journal.” I am against women being in positions of leadership over the man in the family, over whole congregations in a local community, and over whole societies in government, but I am certainly not above taking advice from a good woman, especially concerning how to run the home and how to show a woman you love her. The Bible also defines exactly what a “good woman” is, but that is another topic [“far above rubies”].
I think the reviewer who complained about this journal representing limp-wristed Christianity seems to me to be guilty of the woman hating he complained the secular critics [influenced by feminism] accused the film of, and yet he totally missed the Patriarchal angle of the movie which is clearly what the secular feminist critics were complaining about. Funny how our critics sometimes see things more clearly than our own supposedly informed “in-the-know” brethren do.
Ok maybe the reviewer isn’t guilty of the “woman hating” feminist accusation exactly [I hate to take their side on anything] but he definitely does not understand the Christian principle of tolerance and charity. I agree with him that Christians past and present have been far to tolerant and charitable to outsiders and throwing away pearls before swine but if anything the exact opposite is true when it comes to the family and the home and one’s own community.
That has been our problem for that last century. While we as a society have been bending over backwards to show how loving and tolerant we are towards those not like us we’ve completely neglected our own kind and the surest sign of this is the well documented breakdown of the traditional family and general decline in family values. The average Western family no longer extends the same amount of tolerance, love and respect for their own that they have been programmed to mindlessly shower upon all others.
Another comment I saw on the movie was that after seven years of marriage the couple had no children to show for it. Apparently they do have a daughter as we hear her talking with her mother about how perfect daddy is in the opening credits and we see a picture of her kissing daddy in his fireman hat. So there is child though she doesn’t appear in most of the movie. Apparently she comes after they work out their marriage. Perhaps it is like in the OT when the Lord holds off on blessing a family with a child until they are ready. However, the thought did occur to me that the critic was right about the lack of focus modern Christianity has on the importance of large families. The problem in my view stems from eschatology. Why would a Christian want to bring a child into the world when they believe the end times is upon them, or as most C.I. believe that it is “the time of Jacob’s trouble”?
EDIT: In conclusion, after watching it all the way through I can say I loved it. I highly recommend it to any Christian family or couple and especially to teenagers or college kids so they can get an idea of what a real marriage is about before they go jumping into one unprepared.
