Lars and the Real Girl

I think this movie did a fantastic job at bringing you into Lars's beautiful world. He behaves in such a way that makes you feel both sorry for him and empathetic with his deep longing for love. When he originally comes into the picture, you just want to slap him or hug him....it's hard to know what will do the trick. But as the rest of the movie shows, both of those options are unfavorable; slapping him won't change anything, and he is afraid of hugging people because it hurts him. The best approach, and the one that his friends take, is to go along with this idea that the sex doll is actually alive, and let him deal with whatever it is he needs to deal with on his own.

This is a difficult and tedious task, since we usually want things to be fixed right away, and we also have to be gently guiding the person away from things that will cause unnecessary harm. I think one of the most beautiful things in this movie is how it portrays the community around Lars, and the extent they will go to help him. Their actions speak very loudly, and it is not for their own praise because Lars doesn't even know what's going on. It makes a good point: if you really love someone, get to know them and their needs, and go out of your way to be there for them when they need you. Sacrifice is such a key element to love, because love is selfless - it's about the other person.

I think it is common nowadays to think of love as just a feeling, or just a series of fortunate events that lead to romantic relationships (as Hollywood loves to tell us). But taken to it's logical conclusion, if love  only consisted in these things, it is not permanent and not useful for anything other than making you feel good, which you might as well take drugs if that is all you're looking for... If we were to approach other people in such a way that puts them before us, their needs before ours, then love suddenly has a lot more meaning.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, but I really like how this movie portrayed love as it really is. All things considered, this could very well be a "Christian" film (without all of the unfortunate connotations that come with the term), since it points us to the true nature of God's love, lived out by a humble community in a small town, with one bizarre man as the object of their love.