OK, this movie is not what it sounds like. I mean, I know what you are thinking: MB has finally sailed off beyond left field and out of the freakin ball park. And not in a home run kind of way.
Dirty Filthy Love is a movie about a guy who has both Tourette’s Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is poignant, sad, and one of the funniest movies you are likely to see.
It is a huge riff on Romans 7 and the Bound Will (“I do not understand myself. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate”) as well as the impotent strategies for dealing with this crushing bondage — like trying to convince yourself that your burden is actually a “gift” that should be “celebrated” (hello ECUSA!).
But more than anything it is a movie about love. Love for very unbeautiful, unclean, deeply screwed up people, who are stuck and aren’t getting better.
DFL is a good antidote to what we see in the Church all the time (on the Right and Left) — which is a kind of clean, pretty, attractive, dressed for success Love. A false Cheshire Cat smile of “celebration” (thanks PZ) kind of love. A love that is attracted to the good, moral, wise, and beautiful.
DFL knows a different kind of love. The sort of love that is born in a cowshed next to the manure, in the cold and dead of night. The sort of love that knows suffering and is acquainted with grief and which has no comeliness. The sort of love that showers itself on whores and filthy fisherman and cowards and terrible traitors. The sort of love covered in blood and crying out in abandonment. Dirty filthy love.
NOTE: Tourette’s Syndrome can take the form of being unable to censor outbursts of profanity (though that symptom is comparatively rare amongst those with TS). That actually is REALLY funny in the movie — but bear in mind that you are getting yourself in for a bit of that if you watch this picture.
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8 responses to “Mockingbird At The Movies: Dirty Filthy Love”
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Great post, StampDawg. I'm sold. Speaking of movies… with the Oscars this weekend, I would love to see one of you here at my favorite blog take a look at some of this year's bigger, more commercial films and their various concepts of God. Read this article at First Things this morning ("Children of Lesser Gods") and thought it cried out for the Mockingbird treatment.
https://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/03/children-of-lesser-gods
StampDawg…. or maybe even an Oscars preview?
I second Todd's motion…
Less than 10% of the TS population experience coprolalia, or tic outbursts which include obscenities.
You only think it's common because of the same Hollywood treatment that has harmfully distorted people's perceptions of challenged people.
Please correct your note.
Hey Ken! You are so very right, and I wrote that note at the end of the piece far too hastily. I have corrected it to emphasize that it is in fact rare.
The intention of the note was really just to let readers know that the movie has a lot of profanity in it and why — a disclaimer that is valuable on a Christian web site.
Again, thanks so much for your feedback and my sincere apologies. Best wishes… SD
And it streams on Netflix! Cant wait!
Great point, Josh. I have watched it both ways on NetFlix.
So glad you guys are going to see this movie. I really do love it so.