Spanning almost a century of cinema, this list of films maps a world — real and imagined — devoid of the mercy for which we all have need, as well as a world animated by unexpected and unearned mercies, flipping the script and leaving the plot forever changed. In no particular order, and far from exhaustive:
1. Rust and Bone (2012)
Adapted from Craig Davidson’s short story collection by the same name, this romantic drama, starring Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts, tells the unusual love story of Ali, a destitute single father; and Stephanie, a marine park whale trainer who becomes an amputee after an orca crushes her legs during a performance. As their relationship moves from casual to committed, Ali and Stephanie are met with a love so unexpected and strangely specific to their needs that their damaged souls begin to heal, and together they experience the strange mercy of companionship in a cruel and absurd world.
2. Of Gods and Men (2010)
In 1996, during the gruesome, protracted Algerian Civil War, a conflict between Islamic fundamentalists and the Algerian government, seven Trappist monks were assassinated in their home at the Tibhirine Monastery. Until then this group of Christian brothers had lived quietly and peacefully with their Muslim neighbors, offering medical care and other acts of service to the village, even selling honey in the market. As the war worsens, through their daily prayers confession, the viewer is let in on the monks’ very real fear of death. And while martyrdom is not part of the Cistercian creed, Jesus’ call to love their enemies — a self-denying mercy that would ultimately cost them their lives — is.
3. Tender Mercies (1983)
Country singer Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall) is a beleaguered, twice-divorced alcoholic whose life has become defined by his disappointments. One morning, after a boozy evening out, he wakes up in the Texas Panhandle’s Mariposa Hotel, managed by Rosa Lee (Tess Harper), a single mother and widow whose husband was killed in Vietnam, who has given her life entirely to her son and the Baptist church where she sings in the choir. In exchange for a place to crash, Mac volunteers to stay there and work as a handyman. The two fall in love without much flare, but it’s through this tender mercy of a happenstance romance that Mac, Rosa Lee, and Sonny, her son, light the shadows of their pasts.
4. Joyeux Noël (2005)
Joyeux Noël is a fictionalized account of one of history’s most surprising events. In December 1914, amid the devastation of WWI, an unofficial truce occurred in the hellish trenches between German, French, and Scottish soldiers. Astonishingly, for a short time, the mercy of Christmas prevailed over the horrors of trenches, and friendship, mercy, camaraderie, and joy silenced gunfire.
5. Love & Mercy: The Brian Wilson Story (2014)
Brian Wilson’s life is a strange harmony of torture met with triumph, suffering met with song, and eccentricity met with electricity. This biopic splits the role of Wilson, with Paul Dano playing his childhood and early days with the Beach Boys, specifically the production of the epic Pet Sounds album, and John Cusack playing him in middle age, when he was receiving abusive treatment by Dr. Eugene Landy under the guise of mental illness. Amid this torture, he meets Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), a Cadillac saleswoman who will become his second wife, and is the embodiment of mercy in her dealings with Brian.
6. The Elephant Man (1980)
Shot in vivid black-and-white film, David Lynch’s second-ever feature is the story of English surgeon Frederick Treves’ (Anthony Hopkins) friendship with an ostracized freak-show performer named John Merrick (John Hurt), who has severe skeletal and soft-tissue deformities. While most spectators assume that John’s physical appearance must be coupled with an intellectual disability, John and Frederick’s deep friendship reveals the opposite. Their conversations become a space of profound compassion, introspection, and beauty, revealing the prideful arrogance of quick superficial judgements and the mercy of a friendship born out of open-eyed acceptance.
7. Short Term 12 (2013)
Short Term 12 is set in a foster care ward in southern California providing care to a ragtag group of at-risk teens whose troubles include cutting, drug addiction, and depression. Their chief caretaker is Grace (Brie Larson), formerly a troubled teen herself, who hopes to guide them on less rocky paths. Here Grace’s mercy takes the form of enforcing a steady routine, offering a listening ear, and relentless pursuing when the teens try to run away, literally chasing a “runner” who tries to escape.
8. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
On Christmas Eve, 1945, prayers were heard in heaven for George Bailey of Bedford Falls, NY. Clarence Oddbody, an angel who has not yet earned his wings, is sent to earth to keep George from killing himself. George says he wishes that he had never been born, and Clarence grants his wish, but it doesn’t end there. Together they rehearse crucial moments in George’s life that would have been disastrous if he’d not been born, from a childhood moment where he saves his drowning brother, to the time when he stopped Mr. Gower, a local drug storeman, from accidentally dispensing arsenic tablets. Finally, presented with this evidence and unable to face what might have been, George begs to live and discovers that his wish is mercifully granted just in time for Christmas.
9. Spirited Away (2001)
Spirited Away, one of Hayao Miyazaki’s most celebrated masterworks, is regarded as one of the best animated films ever made. The film is the coming-of-age story of a ten-year-old Japanese girl named Chihiro who, when we first meet her, is despondent about her family’s decision to move to a new home. Like in an Alice in Wonderland trip through the looking glass, her family stumbles across a mysterious tunnel in the middle of the forest, leading to a magical bathhouse run by Yubaba, a cruel witch. With a courageous spirit of compassion and mercy, Chihiro rescues her parents who’ve turned into pigs, and eludes capture by a sinister stalker called No Face, winning her battle with a spirit of charity instead of the obvious super tropes.
10. Dead Man Walking (1995)
Starring Susan Sarandon as Sr. Helen Prejean, a nun working with inmates on death row, and Sean Penn as Matthew Poncelet, an inmate who is a few months from his execution, Dead Man Walking confronts the complexity of crime and punishment, guilt and grace. Avoiding the tropes of Hollywood in a way only the truest stories can, mercy doesn’t bear itself out in a tidy way: Matthew is executed, his victim’s family does not forgive him, nor does he have some sort of deathbed conversation. And yet mercy animates the whole film in the person of Sr. Helen, who experiences all the complexities, contradictions, and hard truths of the situation, and without reservation gives Poncelet every chance to repent.
This list first appeared in The Mockingbird Issue 23: Mercy. Subscribe today!
COMMENTS
3 responses to “Mercy at the Movies”
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Thank you-As the deer pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you O Lord
I would add “Places in the Heart” to this list, with the most profoundly Christian, grace-filled ending ever produced in a commercial, main stream movie.
Places in the Heart is a fantastic movie! Sally Field and John Malkovich at their very bests.