Caveat: This review may contain some spoilers. However, I'll keep it vague and I promise not to reveal any plot or story twists.
I'm not a religious person per se but I do on occasion like a spiritually uplifting movie. Is this that type of movie? Well, sort of. Let's put it this way, it has a spiritual message. But getting there is a bit of a downer.
The movie is about a guy who moves into a rental house that's a few houses down from the one in which he grew up. To say this guy is depressed is like saying Homer's Odyssey is a story about a boat trip. The thing is, this guy wants to be left alone. He wants to sit in his rental house and stare at the walls. He's short on patience, and he's quite rude to his neighbors and some of the people he meets in town.
Obviously, and you realize this right away, this movie is about a person who is about to go through a character arc, and with all character arcs, something needs to happen to trigger the transformation. The 'something' in this story turns out to be what one neighbor -- and soon the whole neighborhood -- believes is the image of Jesus in a stucco stain on the side of the main character's house.
I actually liked this movie. I'm a fan of Luke Wilson, and I thought the supporting cast did a terrific job. This is a slow, purposeful movie with a strong spiritual and even a religious side to it. I won't give away the ending except to say that I think it does something unintended. On the face of it, it delivers spiritually and religiously, but it does so in a way that makes you question the depths of the main character's true motivation. Was he simply depressed because of his situation, or was something else going on in his head? For me, when the movie ended and I thought about it a little, I realized it was all allegory.
Bob
I'm not a religious person per se but I do on occasion like a spiritually uplifting movie. Is this that type of movie? Well, sort of. Let's put it this way, it has a spiritual message. But getting there is a bit of a downer.
The movie is about a guy who moves into a rental house that's a few houses down from the one in which he grew up. To say this guy is depressed is like saying Homer's Odyssey is a story about a boat trip. The thing is, this guy wants to be left alone. He wants to sit in his rental house and stare at the walls. He's short on patience, and he's quite rude to his neighbors and some of the people he meets in town.
Obviously, and you realize this right away, this movie is about a person who is about to go through a character arc, and with all character arcs, something needs to happen to trigger the transformation. The 'something' in this story turns out to be what one neighbor -- and soon the whole neighborhood -- believes is the image of Jesus in a stucco stain on the side of the main character's house.
I actually liked this movie. I'm a fan of Luke Wilson, and I thought the supporting cast did a terrific job. This is a slow, purposeful movie with a strong spiritual and even a religious side to it. I won't give away the ending except to say that I think it does something unintended. On the face of it, it delivers spiritually and religiously, but it does so in a way that makes you question the depths of the main character's true motivation. Was he simply depressed because of his situation, or was something else going on in his head? For me, when the movie ended and I thought about it a little, I realized it was all allegory.
Bob