States of Grace

Last night I finally watched the movie States of Grace by Richard Dutcher. I bought it from Amazon a few months ago, but never got around to watching it. I would have been in more of a hurry if I'd realized how good it was. First of all, the acting and production values are excellent. If you are looking for a hero to replace Mr. Darcy in your list of hot fictional characters, Elder Lozano is your man. Not only is he a hot Latin man, he saves lives and converts gangbangers! Did I mention that he is hot?

All frivolity aside, I thought it was an awesome movie. In some ways it reminded me of Crash, and not just because of the Southern California setting. The characters were all nuanced, and in the end it didn't feel like there were good guys and bad guys, just a bunch of humans trying to figure out their lives. At one point in the movie, Holly, the missionaries' neighbor, is explaining to them her story. She gets fired from her job after resisting the advances of her boss. Then, desperate for money, she decides to make a few porn movies. She incredulously states "Can you imagine, I wouldn't let him touch me, and then I go out and make porn?" She has realized that she is a person with a capacity for both good and bad choices, and that sometimes she makes mistakes. Each of the main characters in the movie comes to realize that each of us is in need of grace and forgiveness at some point in our lives.

Some have complained that the movie is fairly dark in tone and has an ambiguous ending. It is and it does. The ending is also highly symbolic, which feels a little jarring after a movie that is more or less realistic. One of the feelings that I got from this movie was the awkwardness that comes from trying to fit reality into the rules and guidelines we've been given. This is an issue that comes up a lot as a missionary: you are trained with a lot of specific rules and guidelines. And your job is to explain the commandments to other people who don't know what they are. It can get awkward. Like there's a scene where a man has just received a Book of Mormon and he really wants to get baptized. Like, right at that moment. The missionaries are excited about his desire, but they must temper it a little by explaining to him that he needs to understand the doctrine more and that they need to teach him and interview him for worthiness. He accepts and eventually gets baptized. I remember this sort of thing as a missionary: all of us have impulses for good, but sometimes we need to stop and think about the right way to go about them. Actually, we should always stop and think about what we are doing, for good or bad. I think that, besides redemption, this was a major theme of the movie for me. One of the missionaries gets in major trouble over something that started with a very good impulse. Sometimes there is the temptation to assume that the rules we live with will keep us from doing good or from being truly free. They are there to protect us when we can't always see the consequences of what we're about to do. Of course, sometimes they don't. Now I'm just rambling and I should probably go think about this some more before I keep writing. That's what this movie will do for you: it will get you thinking. And that's not a bad thing at all.