Pondered In My Heart

Fireproof

Michael surprised me with a present for Valentine's Day - the just-released-on-DVD movie Fireproof. We had a stay-at-home date that night and watched it together, just the two of us. If you didn't get a chance to see it in theaters last fall I highly recommend you get the DVD. We both thought it was awesome.

Fireproof tells the story of a couple in a troubled marriage, right on the brink of divorce. Indeed it was troubling just to watch the opening scenes, so grave was the fighting between the spouses. This young, attractive, professional couple, Caleb and Catherine, can't seem to say two words to each other without anger, accusations and animosity. Caleb has problems with rage, problems with porn, and Catherine clearly can't take it anymore and declares she wants out. But when Caleb shares this news with his father, he is met with a challenge instead of mere acceptance. Caleb's father suggests he give the marriage forty more days, and promises to send Caleb something in the mail to guide him in this final attempt to save the marriage.

What follows is an amazing journey into the meaning of unconditional love. Oh, we use that term all the time in modern parlance regarding relationships and we think we know what it means. But what Caleb undertakes, and his perseverance, is truly extraordinary. Caleb's father sends him a hand written book called The Love Dare, consisting of forty days of suggested sacrifices to do for his wife, along with Scripture to meditate on each day. Having no interest in that religious Christian stuff, Caleb naturally skips the Bible verse part, thinking it a superfluous waste of time. He agrees to follow along with the dare, apparently to please his father and seemingly to defend himself in a See, I did everything I could sort of way. His half hearted attempts arouse Catherine's curiosity, but she is already letting her heart slip away to someone else's affections, someone smart and handsome and who knows how to push all the right charm buttons to make her feel cared for and 'understood'.

Frustrated by his defeat and eventually heartbroken by his rejection, Caleb is ready to quit and needs his father's help to persevere. And it is at this point when Caleb has hit rock bottom that his father is able to show him his need for his Father.

Caleb accepts. The beautiful thing about this moment is that we know it occurs but it is kept private. We are never exposed to those inner workings within another man's heart that bring him to acknowledge the existence of his Creator and his need for a Redeemer, and we don't hear the words his heart brings forth when it does. We do know that Caleb begins to pray, and although we don't know his words we see the fruit of the change brought about in his heart. He begins to truly love and care for his wife with a servant's heart. It's not an instantaneous change and we see him continue to struggle, but he makes sure and steady progress as he sets out on this new path of New Life.

I don't think it's a 'spoiler' to say the marriage is saved - that's the obvious plot and point of the whole movie. But the story unfolds in a truly beautiful fashion, and yet there are plot twists and diversions that keep the viewer completely engaged in a full spectrum of human emotions. And there is a goodly amount of comic relief to keep it all bearable. Michael and I both thoroughly enjoyed this movie and we think it is fantastic that it is doing so well and is readily available to the public.

Responding to the Critics

I have read a number of reviews of this movie and I've been surprised by some of the criticism, particularly from people of faith; I read an article on CNN that was more positive than the review on Christianity Today. I've also seen various uniquely 'Catholic' complaints, such as the couple being married for seven years yet have no children. The issue is never mentioned in the movie, so we don't know if it's the result of infertility or the couple's own doing. It is quite possible and even likely that if Caleb and Catherine had welcomed children from the outset of their marriage that they would never have degenerated into the self-absorbed, self-serving, selfish people that they are at the start of the movie. But this film isn't about what they should have done or could have been; it's about how to salvage a relationship that is about to be dissolved now. My husband also noted that for the sake of the storyline it's good that the couple had no children, so there was no notion of 'staying together for the children's sake'. Caleb saw the marriage as worth saving on its own account, thus keeping the story applicable for even those couples who haven't been blessed by children in their own marriages. As the story unfolds the value and beauty of marriage is increasingly understood by the characters, and it seems likely that they would continue to grow out of their selfishness and welcome children in the future.

I've also read complaints that the movie is too one-sided, but that is exactly what makes the film and the 'Love Dare' so powerful. It's not about two spouses sitting down with a counselor and deciding to save their marriage together, and that's why it can give hope to so many. It shows that a marriage can be saved just with one person deciding to change, and that true sacrificial love can change another person's heart. It portrays the kind of unconditional love that we can only achieve with God's help - the kind of love that enabled Corrie ten Boom to forgive and love the Auschwitz prison guards or Pope John Paul his would-be assassin. That kind of love requires supernatural help, the kind of love God has for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  That's one-sided love, for sure.

Random Caspian Commentary

And I mean random.

• You should see Edmund's pocket torch! It's huge.
• You can tell some of the music is absolutely the same as the last movie. When they get into Narnia they play the same exact "We got into Narnia" music. When you see a picture of Mr. Tumnus on the wall it's the same ""Tumnus" music...
• When Prince Caspian blows his horn it is sort of dumb.
• When they attack the castle Peter says "For Narnia!" the exact same way he says it in LWW only he doesn't say "And for Aslan". (shocking!)
• The Minotaur and the gate are right out of The Red Keep.
• Susan is like Legolas.
• Mice play bagpipes. And they have really long tails.
• When Lucy dropbottles Trumpkin his wounds don't go away but Edmund's do in LWW.
• Susan throws arrows in battle. It doesn't work - you can't really throw arrows.
• When there is Prince Caspian music the way it starts is like the first three notes of the Gondor theme. (It goes up a fifth but that's nothing special - a lot of Bach fugues do that.)
• There is lots of blue scale armor that looks strange.
• There's no Gwendolyn and no nurse. No Bacchus of course because he's too wild.
• Aslan is a bit unreal because he's been inflated.
• The centaurs look awful and look like they've been growing mold since LWW. (?)
• There was a kid centaur.
• The badger was awful and slithy and really weird. He was skinny and fat and he waddled.
• The dwarves were better than in LWW.
• They had really complicated catapults.
• The river god was awesome.
• I could make lists of the things right out of LOTR.
• Cornelius was too fat and too tall and too wonky and he wore pince-nez.
• The attack on the castle was really wrong as they couldn't possibly win. It was not Narnia style warfare.
• Aslan's Howe was very well done.
• Reepicheep is not as valiant as in the book.
• They got Destrier very right. (I wonder if Kateri the horse lover agrees?)
• The characters are flatter. There is no dialogue worth repeating or acting out like we do with LWW.
• Susan hits everyone with her arrows and she never runs out of arrows.
• There is the Legolas trick of jumping onto a centaur. But no one is supposed to ride a centaur until The Silver Chair.
• (note no one would even mention the you-know-what between Susan and Caspian)

They all liked the movie and are anxious to see it again, this time with me. (Not sure how we're going to arrange that one but it does sound tempting.) After reading various reviews I was really hesitant to let Mary Rose go as she is easily frightened by movies, and I had her half convinced to stay home. But when Michael arrived home to take them all out he said she had to go. It was also very endearing the way they big kids all said she had to go as well, so off she went. She's nearly eight and had never been to a movie theater. She said she hid her face in Michael's sleeve when it got too scary, peeking out to check when it was safe to watch again. She said it was a horrifying awful scary movie and she really liked it and wants to see it again. Tomorrow. :-)

As MacBeth has said in her review, it's not like the book. But the children knew that going into the movie, so they didn't really expect a true representation of their beloved book. They have seen LWW over a dozen times, and though they didn't like a lot of it at the first viewing, they got used to it.  They've learned that a movie is not like a book even if it has the same name. The boys also greatly enjoy the LOTR movies. I think they see movies simply as a form of entertainment. As MacBeth also noted here, the spiritual richness and beautiful way Truth is presented in the book are omitted in the movie, but my family expected that after the LWW movie.  Jonathan noted that sitting in a movie theater in front of a giant screen with a bunch of strangers eating popcorn is not a place he expects to encounter great spiritual truths. The intimacy and privacy of a book may be a more suitable venue for discovering what Lewis so delightfully presents to us through his Chronicles. But we don't watch many movies. I find it ironic that in this interview director Andrew Adamson states, "I've decided not to use these films as a platform or springboard for my own beliefs. I was very much expressing C. S. Lewis's story and allowing people to take from it whatever they took from the book." Yet he is clearly promoting his own ideas by what he has omitted from the movie. How he thinks this movie is "staying true to the book" I don't know. But that is what we've come to expect from him and from a movie.

So enjoy the great adventure film for what it is but also use it as an excuse to re-read and savor the deliciousness that is the book.  Everyone here had devoured the whole familiar series before the movie and most are going through them again now. After all, no one ever wants to leave Narnia after a visit, because you never know when you will ever get to go back again.

What did you think of the movie?