Boy A

Sleep is hard to come by tonight, so I'll blog instead.

Tonight's Signs and Wonders movie, Boy A, was really good, and I wish more people could have came to see it. The premise is Jack Burridge has just been let out of jail after being in jail since he was a child. He is now a young man and really has no clue how to live a functional life. He gets help from a man who plays the role as his "uncle" named Terry, and Terry views Jack as his "greatest achievement" because basically, Jack is successful at getting himself off to a good life.

Sadly, his name isn't really Jack.

And he has a twenty-grand bounty on his head.

And his life has only just begun before it's all over.

I discussed this a lot after the movie, so sorry for those who were present and have to put up with me saying it again, but I almost feel like this movie is an extension off of today's class. Jack 's road to becoming a child-aged murderer is one that occurred because -I think- he was lacking that love and structure of a family and/or friends.

In order to find acceptance and companionship from someone Jack befriended a boy named Phillip Craig, who's temper and evil nature wound up engulfing both of Jack and Phillip. But the common denominator between both these boys is the fact that both had no family behind them, and really no example to follow.

Phillip went home and got raped by his brother. Jack went home and got yelled at for having sympathy for his dying mother, and had a drunk and ignorant father. And while these circumstances are horrid, they reflect a lot of familial situations well, even if some families aren't yet to this extreme.

Anyway, when Jack is released and is trying to create a life for himself, he falls in love.

At one time, he says to his girlfriend Kelly--who by the way is not a stick like most of female actresses the audience likes to see today; she's a real, genuine and pretty woman that's [oh no]  overweight [oh the shame]--- "I never thought I'd say those words to anyone or ever have anyone say those words to me." He's talking about when she says she might love him by the way.

It's a cruel end to what could have been a well meant life. Society ultimately won't accept Jack. And while I could see that coming early on in the movie, I like to focus more on Jack not accepting Jack. His real name is Eric Wilson, and I think that keeping Eric Wilson a lie would override Jack's good intentions in the end.

A neverending, crying Andrew Garfield

There's a certain price to pay when it comes to sinning and then using more sin to cover it up. This arises a discussional point that Leeper brought up after the movie but we never really concluded: What if Jack had gone on living as he had begun and no one had figured out he was a criminal? Would his life have been good?

I think that Jack's using a lie--which he felt guilty to use--to cover up that he was a murderer would have more vices than not. My mom has always told me "Your sin will find you out" and so far, it always has, whether through someone else or through eating through me. I'm a believer in not being able to cover up a sin with good deeds, or even good intentions.

But then again, committing a murder when one was a child with monumentally different context is warranted to having the individual change in say a decade or so. A lot of correction can happen from childhood to adulthood, so maybe Jack was in the right by lying and starting over?

And, while I'm contradicting myself, don't Christians often end up sinning and covering it up by smearing good intentions or deeds over it? Isn't repentance itself a good intention? But repentance is absolution and absolution is the end of it but what if it wasn't really meaningful in the first place? I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm hoping no one will read this anyway you see, because it's pretty long. Long blog posts can be intimidating. No one goes to a blog to read a book, so I'm riding on the hope that no one will actually read this far down. :D