Movie Review

Directed by Gillian Armstrong, starring: Cate Blanchette and Ralph Feinnes, 20th Century Fox,131 minutes, 1997.

I'll bet that even if you don't cry, this romantic and ironic tale will make your throat tight and your glasses misty.

We meet Oscar Hopkins as a very young child in Devon. His mother has died and his grief stricken father takes her clothes and throws them into the sea. The young child follows and is engulfed by the waves; a traumatic experience that leaves him forever phobic about water. As a young teenager he knows he must leave the tyranny of his father's stern and narrow Plymouth Brethrenism and so he casts lots for what he will become. Baptist? Anglican? Catholic? Brethren? The first toss turns up Anglican. "Please dear God, NO!" he exclaims. But when each subsequent toss turns up the same he sets out to find the local vicar and joins his household. The vicar discerns,(or is it three glasses of wine?) that the boy has a vocation and sends him to his 'old college'.

Oscar is so unworldly that he doesn't even know what a Bet is. He soon finds out for his worldly college mate Wardly Fish introduces him to 'the horses' where Oscar is a very successful punter who wins big and is hooked but only uses a modest amount for his needs and gives the rest to the poor. Thus is set two of the great metaphors of the story: addiction as a metaphor for life and gambling as a metaphor for faith.

Lucinda Le Plastrie appears as a young girl in Australia where she is given a Prince Rupert's Drop, "a small glass bulb that is cooled quickly, becoming subjected to unequal strains of contraction, if a portion of its tail is broken off the bulb flies into pieces". It is impervious to hammer and axe but when squeezed with pliers it shatters. When Lucinda's mother dies she takes all of her inheritance and buys a glass works in Sydney. Here is set the other metaphor for faith: Glass. "She knew glass was a thing in disguise. It was not solid at all but liquid; frail as ice on a puddle; strong as Sydney sandstone, as good material as any to build a life on".

Oscar, in shame and revulsion for his gambling addiction tries the 'geographic cure'. He applies to C.M.S. to go to Australia and God in God's ironic sense of humour calls him to go, even though he must travel by water. Lucinda is returning from England and it is on this trip that as the narrator, a great grandchild says, "In order that I live, two gamblers, one obsessive and one compulsive must declare themselves." They meet because Lucinda goes looking for a card game and stumbles through a wrong door to find Oscar studying. In her confusion she asks him to hear her confession. in the course of which he discovers she is a card player. There follows a lively theological justification from Oscar. It is the best articulation of Pascal's Wager you will want to hear. "All of life is a game of chance. We bet our lives that there is a God and God's fundamental requirement is that we gamble our immortal souls".

The second half of the story concerns a plan for Lucinda to build a glass church to be transported to an out back station where another cleric, Dennis Hassett a former companion of Lucinda's is the vicar. When told that a glass church in the Australian Outback is 'not practical', Oscar says "Not practical!? What is the practical purpose of The Church? If it is only to provide shelter for Christians, my father takes this view: Then better worship in rooms behind the blacksmith. But if the purpose is also a celebration of God, then I am the most practical of men!"

Watch in the story for the interplay of Chance and the Direction God; the unequal balance of Grace and Despair and the ironies of Redemption and Judgment. Finally, enjoy the quirky ending. 2 to 1 it makes you cry.