Broker, the new film out of South Korea, tells the dreary tale of two conspirators who surreptitiously steal orphans to sell on the adoption black market. What’s really negotiated, though, is the fate of every last person who falls within the blast radius of the little operation. This is a decidedly hardscrabble story. However, like the ebullient prologue of St. John’s extended passion, the director generously applies pacing, music, and pathos to tell this story in a decidedly gentle and endearing manner:
As the film progresses, the viewer is quickly made to understand that all the characters drag a string of setbacks and failures with them. In other words, like the rest of us, they all have a history. And it’s a history that’s quickly catching up with them.
The infants the two men are trafficking are merely a means to forestall the walls from closing in. The traffickers both seem to understand this and have even managed to come to some acceptance of it, too. Whatever peace they’ve managed to make with their arrangement, though, threatens to go sideways when the biological mother of an infant they are in the process of selling returns. She is just as hard up as everyone else, though. So it doesn’t take much negotiating to get her to agree to split the profits and go along with the racket.
What ensues is sort of bizarro road trip romp. When another orphan sneaks aboard their beat-up van, their makeshift crew is complete. All is not happy, though. Theirs is an unhappy business. The law is onto them. So is the paternal grandmother of the child to be sold. And then the mob shows up to demand for immediate payment of bills long past due. It’s a bit difficult to keep it all straight, but the characters all cry out for the viewer’s consideration so thoroughly that it’s no chore doing so. Plus, those external factors are by no means the real stakes of the story.
What’s really up for grabs in Broker isn’t whether these characters can turn a profit from the sale of the baby, but whether they can break free of their circumstances. But, as in real life, none of the characters have the means to do so. After all, their best efforts only made the precarious situations they’ve found themselves in that much worse.
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Herein lies the wisdom of the faith; the Gospel must come from outside. Our own best efforts, no matter how noble, have no greater recourse than the current unpleasant circumstances. And Broker is realistic enough to recognize this. However, neither is the film nihilistic enough to leave the characters to such untenable circumstances, either.
Like us, all the characters desperately grope for an escape hatch. And to varying degrees, they find approximations of getaways. One of the brokers can cut out his friends to clear his debts. The mother can sell out the brokers to get a reduced sentence for her past infractions. These are all relatively unpalatable consolation prizes, though. And, as the noose tightens, no viable alternatives emerge. Accordingly, all of the characters contemplate their own individual breakaways.
On the final night before all the forces collide, the characters share a meal. And, like the Last Supper, the circumstances cry out for a preacher. One character suggests the mother say goodbye to her child. The mother, though, recognizes that given the present situation, she has no right to say such a thing. This is when, as the Gospel is wont to do, something really novel actually takes place. I will leave that revelation for you, the reader, to experience for yourself. Suffice it to say, what happens is what occurs every time the church gathers.
Forgiveness is spoken to one sinner through another sinner. Mercy comes embodied. Human beings, with all their screwups, are one of God’s preferred means of dispensing grace.
And, as always happens when the Gospel gets loose, everyone gets amorous for the absolution. The characters craft an ad-hoc cathedral. And one-by-one this word is spoken over every last person. It’s spoken over them all despite their past malfeasances. In fact, it’s uttered in the very middle of their trespasses before anyone can even think about repenting!
For once, every character has the weight of their own existence taken off their shoulders. With mere words, every character finally receives their existence. And they receive it as the gift it’s been all along!
What happens next is what the sixteenth-century reformers called New Obedience. Freed from their circumstances, each character grabs their loosened noose and runs headlong into their own denouement. Their actions are aimed at releasing each other from their snares.
I’ve already noted that Broker is a realistic film. So there is no happily ever after. However, with that word from outside, a little “ever after” has instead happily broken in on everyone. In fact, like Saint Paul himself, the person who leverages the life-giving debris of this freedom is the former law(wo)man. She bears the consequences of this freedom for anyone who might want to share it. The rest is left to the viewer.
Broker presents a picture of the church at its truest. There are no stained-glass saints in the church. Everyone is a mixed bag. But Christ isn’t afraid to get mixed up in this dogpile, either. And whenever he does, he commissions sinners to proclaim his word to fellow sinners. And when that word gets loose, everyone within the blast radius become part of the Heuflein Christi, the little band of Christ.
And you should understand, dear reader, that you are a part of the motley crew of little-Christ’s piled in on the great road trip through this veil of tears. You have no sin in the path of your life that Christ is ashamed to pave with his Calvary concrete. This means whenever past sins come nipping at your heels, you have every right to storm into your pastor’s office and demand they do their job. If you’re looking for a script, you could try this: “Tell it to me. Give me the word that raises the dead.”
And as a pastor, let me tell you, there’s no greater joy than someone telling you to earn your paycheck. But trust me, the joy doesn’t come from actually being of an occasional little use in Christ’s church. No, the pleasure is in the fact that whenever Christ’s word gets loose, it echoes back to the one speaking it. The one who needs to hear that word just as desperately as everyone else — just like in the best scene of Broker.
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And the movie has the best van scenes since Little Miss Sunshine