The male gorilla was in top form too running back and forth and showing his teeth just on the other side of the glass from all the kids who were gathered there. Of course my kids thought the best part was that the gorilla kept pointing his rear end at the crowd. All in all it was a wonderful day and we even got sunburns—on April 2! As you can see from the picture, it tuckered us out.On Easter day we had the opportunity to go out to Roger and Arlene Thompson’s place for Easter lunch and they invited our young yellow lab Eli to come with us. With six acres to play on we found out just how far he is willing to run to retrieve a ball and he tired himself out so much he climbed up on their back porch and just laid his face in the water bowl. After we got home we finally fulfilled a promise to Wyatt to get him a fish for his little one gallon fish tank. Wyatt’s new roommate is a beautiful blue Beta fish who Wyatt so originally named “Sponge Bob Squarepants.”
Another portion of our animal themed week was that we watched the movie We Bought a Zoo, which is an Americanized telling of actual events in the life of a family in England, which stars Matt Damon and Scarlett Johanson. We were expecting a silly and kid-targeted film, something like Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which is a cute, funny movie. But We Bought a Zoo didn’t turn out to be that type of movie. Don’t get me wrong, there wasn’t any violence or sex, and there were probably only three or four cuss words, all spoken at moments when most of us probably would let one fly. We Bought a Zoo wasn’t what we expected because it was really a very deeply moving film about a man and his two kids dealing with the death of their wife/mother just six months or so prior.
Benjamin Mee and his two kids, aged 14 and 7, have decided to get out of their apartment in the city (somewhere in California in this Americanized version) to buy a house out in the country. The reasoning for this involves all the difficult memories that are in their apartment and the fact that his 14-year-old son has just been expelled from school as a result of continued acting out in the months since his mother’s death. Target stores must have paid a bunch of money for product placement because the characters keep mentioning that their new house will be nine miles from the closest Target store. Oh, horror of horrors! When Benjamin finds the house that really calls out to him he is then informed that it comes with a zoo on the property. In defiance of his older brother’s advice and his 14-year-old’s protests, he blows his inheritance on the zoo. The film then becomes about the relationships between Benjamin and his new zoo staff, Benjamin and the animals, and Benjamin and his kids. It’s a movie about relationships in the aftermath of the loss of the person you loved most in the whole world. There is a heart wrenching scene in which an argument finally explodes between Benjamin and his son. The boy feels that their new life is the result of his father’s selfishness, that his dad must think he’s the only one who lost somebody. The father, Benjamin, is worn out and frustrated, from grief and stress, and needs his son to start participating in life again, especially in relationship to the boy’s seven-year-old sister. It was interesting to me that I realized during the scene that for so long when I saw scenes like that I still related to the child instead of the parent. This time, finally, I related to the father. The sense of loss and desperate grasping for some sort of comfort in the scene ended with Danielle and I both having eyes filled with tears. There is a parallel storyline as well about a 17-year-old tiger that needs to be put down that Benjamin can’t bring himself to make the choice. Throughout the movie, the stories of the animals often parallel the emotions of the humans.
So why do I bring up We Bought a Zoo? It wasn’t a “Christian” movie in any sense (I usually don’t like those anyway as the screenwriting and acting is often quite terrible) and I don’t think God is mentioned once. But as a Christian, I cannot help but think of God when I watch a movie about relationships in the aftermath of devastating loss. A good friend of mine was killed in a car accident when he was only 26 (I was 21 at the time), and as I mentioned a few Sundays ago my Granny died back in 2005. But I have never experienced the loss of someone as close to me as a spouse or parent. I know some of you have, and I cannot even imagine what that must be like.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, the Apostle Paul writes, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” We need to notice, however, that Paul does not say that we do not grieve; he says we do not grieve in the same way as those who have no hope. We grieve in a way that still holds on to hope.
In the film, Benjamin and the others finally realize that there are times in life when you simply must play with the cards you’ve been dealt in life. They could not keep their beloved wife and mother from dying (it isn’t mentioned how she died), but they could find a way to go on living in the aftermath of her death. What finally gives Benjamin and his family hope is a new sense of purpose in restoring and reopening the zoo, and a new sense of family not only with one another but with the zoo staff, Benjamin’s older brother who finally gets on board with the zoo, and with the animals. There is even a bit of a muted love story between Benjamin and the zookeeper, which isn’t really explored too deeply, which I was happy about. The emphasis remains on his relationship with his late wife and with his children. But it is the power of community and the power of purpose that bring them through. As a Christian I would add the comfort and hope of God in Jesus Christ, but I think quite often that comfort and hope is manifested in those around us and with the reclaiming or revising of our purpose in life.
If you are looking for a good movie to watch and you don’t mind about four cuss words, I would encourage you to watch We Bought a Zoo. Although it is out on DVD and Blu Ray, it won’t be available in Red Box until May 1. We watched it on Time Warner On Demand. The non-HD version was actually free until April 24, so if you have access to Time Warner On Demand you might check to see if you can watch it for free in the next couple of weeks. If you do watch it you might want to have a box of Kleenex along with your popcorn.
Happy Easter season! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!
