Get Low

If it were just for the fact that Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Bill Murray were in this movie it would be worth watching. But Get Low is worth watching for a number of other reasons.

By the time you get to your own funeral you’ve lost the ability to say your last words to everyone, and everyone has lost their ability to say theirs to you. Get Low tells the story of a hermit, Felix Bush, from Tennessee in the 1930s, who is misunderstood by the town in which he lives and who plans his own funeral for just such a purpose. Along the way, we are shown glimpses of his past and given hints as to what his intentions for the funeral are, but it is not until the penultimate scene that the curtain if fully pulled back (and I won’t spoil that for you here.)

Suffice it to say Felix Bush holds a dark secret which has plagued him for most of his adult life. In this ‘based on a real person’ life story, we find moments to laugh (of course, with Bill Murray around!), cry (remember…Sissy Spacek!), and to confront our own dark secrets and how we wish to be known in this life. Without giving away too much (maybe I already have), we are shown a genuine moment of forgiveness following a lifetime of self-imposed exile.

Ironically, I am currently reading through Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, books I recommend, and it is certainly obvious that Dante believes in a purgatory after death that cleanses the soul from one’s sins, and I understand the urge to believe this. Most of us, if we are truly honest with ourselves, know that we have done things in this life for which there is no excuse and for which no reasonable level of mercy can be expected. And when we come toward the end of our act on this earth we realize that even though we have tried as hard as we can, our account is still in the red.

Thankfully, however, we don’t have to face eternity with our hands empty save for a debit slip. And, thankfully, we don’t have to make the choice Felix Bush did in his life. God’s mercy and grace cover us, in this life and the next, even though we can’t comprehend how they do.

Get Low forces us to think about forgiveness from the culprit’s, the victim’s, and the watching public’s vantage points. But that is not all. It forces us to ask, if we are willing, if we want to waste our lives not living in grace and mercy, as both an offender and as a conduit of God’s love.