Rector's Message

My Dear Friends,

From time to time, I like to comment on contemporary films, and this is one of those occasions. Two weeks ago, I saw "The Human Stain," based on the novel by Philip Roth and starring the incomparable Anthony Hopkins. I certainly do recommend it and, in fact, I think it would make a good "holiday movie"—not a film about Christmas, or about family celebration or anything like that, but a film about values of the sort we might well think of at the season of Christmas.

Overtly, this is a film about race, and my guess is that the director, who adapted this film from a much longer, more complex novel, chose the parts of the book he included based upon a desire to say something sensible about race in the United States. We certainly have a lot to say about racial issues, but, in my view it is not always very useful material designed to create dialogue, articulate positive values, and show the way forward toward being a genuinely integrated society. Of course, one could argue that being an integrated society is no longer our goal—and there are signs that this is true, but for my money, I think that inclusion and integration is the way to go. We will do better by affirming those things which unite us rather than highlighting those which divide.

The incident which starts the film is an offhand comment made by a middle aged, apparently white, professor of English in a New England College. He refers to some perpetually absent students, whom he has never seen, as "spooks"—meaning ephemeral characters. But, because the students are unknown to him, he is unaware that they are black students, for whom the term "spook" is a racially derogatory slur. For this he is hauled up before a university disciplinary committee and summarily cashiered.

The story goes on to outline what seems, initially, to be the disintegration of his life. His wife dies suddenly. He begins an affair with a younger woman. (That was bound to happen, I suppose, these days.) His careers is gone, his wife is gone, presumably, his financial viability is gone. Life seems to be over.

But that is not really the point which the filmmaker is making. In fact, his sacking by the college is the beginning of his looking honestly at who he is and who he has pretended to be for many years.

For the Anthony Hopkins character is a black man. One who, as they say , "passes." That is, passes for white. In his late teens, he had left his family behind and started a new life as a white man. In one poignant moment, his mother, a wonderfully skilled actress who has not only some of the best lines in the film but an eloquent array of facial expressions, asks how she will see her grandchildren, when they come along. "Will you tell me to be in the train station at a certain time, so I can see them from a distance? Is that how it will be?" Pretty much that is how it was going to be.

So, the event which is supposed to have destroyed his life actually becomes the event which gives some degree of honesty to his life. The young woman with whom he has an affair engages in a somewhat paler version of self-discovery. I will not tell you much more about the film, because you will want to see it and come to your own conclusions, but here are a few observations you might want to keep in mind as you reflect on the movie.

The film tells us that the worst thing we can do to ourselves is to deny who we are. In a society as racist as ours once was, it was usually impossible for a black man to deny who he was. But sometimes it did happen. Many of us make similar observations about gay men and lesbians both in church and in society. Why, people ask, do gays have to spend so much time telling us who they are? As one wag put it, the love that used to be ashamed to speak its name seems to have turned into the love that just won’t shut up. But the way to health begins with honesty, or as Jesus says in one of the gospels, it is the truth which really sets you free.

Like many pieces of literature or philosophy, this film is about the redemption of evil acts. No one would deny that the Hopkins character was a victim of an overly sensitive, politically correct white establishment. What happened to him was bad, and for a few reels, you get the feeling that this is going to be a film focused upon a speeding crescendo of self-destruction. But that is not the case.

Like many bad things which happen to people, the events which destroyed a part of Hopkins life turn out to be redemptive. It is in loss that he discovers who he is. Note, please, that this idea is one way of thinking about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The crucifixion was awful. Its story is meant to shock, stun, and sadden us. But the event, as bad as it was, helped make it clear who Jesus actually was. In his death, he found life, in his loss of identity, he discovered who he was in the plan and scheme of God. That paradox is often true for many of us.

The film tells us something about taking the hard course over the easy one. If ever there was a race card which could have been played, the Hopkins character well and truly had it in his hand. With three little words, he could have diffused the whole situation, avoided the catastrophe, disarmed his opponents. Why didn’t he?

Well, for one thing it would have meant a drastically shorter, different film. But for another, perhaps by that time in his life, he may have been unable to own up to his true identity. For some reason, and it may well have been a deeply unconscious one, he could not tell us who he was. (And, in fact, he never did, just to tell you one thing about how the story ends.) But there was something which compelled him to take the low road, to plunge deeply into chaos and—no pun really intended—darkness. He takes that step off the edge of the building and his life is forever changed.

As I said earlier, this is not a "Christmas movie." But it is a movie about truth telling, values, self discovery, mendacity, and loneliness. That seems a lot more "Christmassy" than any number of films about English prime ministers who have unexpected love affairs in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament or sing off key versions of Good King Wenceslas on St. Stephen’s Day. But, than again, that is another movie—one about which I plan to say nothing.

Faithfully,
The Rev’d Lloyd Prator
Rector