To be honest, in addition to Diane Warren's song, I thought all of the music from this movie was great. And, as it turns out, Breakthrough is actually pretty well made. It has some really good lines in it. I even think the movie has a strain of agnostic skepticism running through it that I found interesting. But Breakthrough is first and foremost a movie that is super-invested in the god and the power of the god. Or, maybe I should say: the power of people who believe in the god to get things done or make the god do things or speak to the god and ask him to do things. The god actually doesn't appear in the film. What we see instead is people of faith closing their eyes and praying or saying magic words and also people speaking about the power of the god. I found most of that stuff just really laughable. I have no ability to take this kind of thing seriously.
At the end of the movie, Topher Grace (he and Josh Lucas are both really great in this, and I loved Lisa Durupt too) has all of the medical personnel and rescue workers who saved this boy stand up, and I thought, Right – these are the people who actually saved this boy's life. And then he also had everyone who prayed for the kid stand. Ok. Fine. But I'm just not into this idea. Those people are not responsible for the boy's rescue in the same way as the actual people who worked hard to save this boy.
The trouble, for me, is that Breakthrough isn't actually interested in the parts of this story that I think are interesting. The main character, for example, begins to feel that it is not the god but she who is keeping the boy alive, that she has some kind of spiritual or magical power (either) over the god or over life and death. This is a fascinating moment in Breakthrough, but it's one that the film doesn't really want to explore. Instead, there is a single scene where she realizes that she's being a little nuts and then she, like, prays about it for a bit and we're done.
No comments:
Post a Comment