Review of Beautifully Broken (2018) by Donald P — 01 Sep 2018

After recently reading the Old Testament accounts of Moses receiving instructions to annihilate certain people groups (men, women and children) I've been a bit sensitive to any reference to genocide. Stories of these events such as the Holocaust, and the purge by Stalin and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia chill my blood. I thank God that I have never been involved on either end of such a horrific situation. I knew in advance that the movie Beautifully Broken would thrust me right into the middle of the genocide carried out in Rwanda about 25 years ago. I wasn't sure I could find a movie on such a topic enjoyable. It turned out that I didn't have much problem at all, except for the opening scenes.

At first feelings of hopelessness and helplessness flooded my soul as I watched senseless and brutal violence carried out against innocent souls (men, women, and children) just because of the tribe of their birth. I couldn't help compare that scenario with our current polarized society in America. Could there perhaps be a second civil war? Might it pit black versus white or democrat versus republican or liberal versus conservative? An idea that normally would seem out of range of reality suddenly seemed inevitable. Perhaps TS Eliot was right; the world would end with a whimper. The sense that the world is insane and that violence and hatred will always triumph over goodness and love pervaded my soul for a while. Man's inhumanity to man reigns supreme, right? Not so fast.

Whereas my first burning question may be why evil exists, my later ruminations on this topic come up with the idea that it's more remarkable that so much goodness exists in this tainted world, not that there is evil. Do we accomplish anything by cursing the darkness or do we help resolve the problem by lighting a spiritual candle in that environment? By letting the light of God shine through us in sacrificial love, we can defeat the seeming inevitable. As the movie pressed on, the rock solid notion that evil can never win when God is involved struck me. What happens in this life is temporary. Six million Jews exterminated in World War II may be dead, their promising lives snuffed out by a madman, but their eternal future was not determined by the whims of murderers. The devil can never defeat us by murdering us. He can only win if we let the threat of murder instill a paralyzing fear inside of us that causes us to doubt our Creator and His goodness. This movie did not portray life as a Sunday school picnic, but it did display the fact that if we choose to make a stand for life, love, and God, we can forge a world of blooms and fruit in a desert environment. We can overcome.

The mightiest theme of this movie is one that will escape many. Jesus told us to be anxious in nothing. From my observations, many Christians fret on a frequent basis. There is a lot of hardship in life. Some of it touches every life. And death comes to everyone. Old age will too if people successfully dodge death long enough. With aging, loss of functionality of our bodies and minds cause great consternation. The goal of a believer should be to so tightly press into God that nothing causes worry. That doesn't mean we don't have to be vigilant and prudent, but that we simply are proactive in avoiding situations that will bring problems without suffering paranoia concerning them. And our goal should be to become like Job, ready to say, it doesn't matter if the Lord should slay me, yet I will honor and obey Him. I don't know how the future of the world will play out exactly, but movies like this give us a glimpse of what it's like to trust in God's provision.

This film is based upon a true story. That means much of it happened but some facts were tweaked to make the story more interesting. The American family was linked to both families from Rwanda, but it seems the storyline involving the connection of two Rwandan men was fabricated, which would have been a coincidence of miraculous proportions. That subplot added much to the story so I understand why they wrote it that way. True life seems to be comprised of ninety-nine percent humdrum, mundane events and one percent of extraordinary occurrences. And for that reason, a purely true story usually doesn't make it to the silver screen. I'm glad this one did. There is enough food for thought in this one to fill you up and require you to request a doggie bag. There is enough meat here so you can even ignore the publicity gimmick of having token appearances by Christian celebrities. Unfortunately, this movie is receiving the same apathy as most faith based films and is dying at the box office without making much of a splash. It's frustrating to see people trying to shine a light in the darkness and those who supposedly champion the cause of light stand by and do nothing to magnify it.