The “AI Overview” describes a movie I saw recently on a flight as, “a quiet, character-driven drama that is widely considered well acted but very slow paced.”
I would agree with that assessment. But, I enjoyed it, nonetheless.
The story is about an aging, long-married couple who take a post-Christmas holiday from their home in Glasgow and spend a week in Amsterdam. During their time there they find they are examining in the bleak winter days the state of their marriage, the husband’s drinking, the wife’s long-lost sense of purpose, and if their marriage can move forward.
Spoiler Alert: Part of what I found engaging is that the woman is interested in a convent that she knew about in Amsterdam, but which she learns no longer exists. Years earlier in Northern Ireland during a shooting the woman had made a promise to God (Much like Martin Luther’s in the storm) that she would devote her life to him if only God would save her baby. The baby is able to pull through, and the result being that she feels she has wasted her life because she never fulfilled her promise to God in the ways she expected to do so. For his part, the husband is a secular man who really has little time for her religious imaginings.
For me, the story in part how our vocations in life (and I would suggest there are many of them, such as our family and career choices) can be understood in a variety of ways.
Some quotes from the book upon which the movie is based include:
“What was love but a lifetime of conversations. And silences. Knowing when to be silent. Above all, knowing when to laugh.”
“To him her presence was as important as the world. And the stars around it. If she was an instance of the goodness in this world then passing through by her side was miracle enough.”
“She knew that the only way to improve the world, without patronising anyone, was to improve herself.”
“In every relationship,’ said Stella, ‘there’s a flower and a gardener. One who does the work and one who displays.”
“Then in an explosion of wings all the pigeons rose and took to the air. ‘Why do they do that?’ ‘What?’ ‘The simultaneous thing. One goes, they all go.’ ‘They must be Catholics.”
“But some day, somehow she would move into soul. It happened to everybody who had ever lived since the beginning of time. Soul was her, minus her body.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break
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