An Interesting Film

I found a link to this on another blog I follow and decided to check it out. The film is called The Butterfly Circus and is part of a project encouraging writers and directors to create short films about hope. Any of you familiar with the movie Bella will recognize actor Eduardo Verastegui playing one of the lead roles in the film.

*For a complete spoiler-free experience, watch the film (20 minutes long) first then read on...*

I really enjoyed this movie! Some of the comments on the site decried its simplicity and I agree that the story was pretty simple, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. While this may not be ground-shattering Oscar-winning material, the theme of the movie was powerful. At first glance the movie might seem to be about disability or Will's learning how to swim, but I think his character serves as a metaphor or a symbol to get us all to look deeply into what holds us back. What is it that we don't like about ourselves? That we don't value? That we don't see as "magnificent" or beautiful? And most importantly, how do we let that idea hold us back from being the full men and women that God created us to be, so that we can go forth and love others in this world?

The movie was not explicitly Christian per se, but anyone familiar with Eduardo Verastegui's story knows about his deep and fervent Catholic faith. The author of the original blog also posted a link to website of the man playing Will, Nick Vujicic and it's clear that he too is a devout Christian. Having that faith in God teaches us much about our purpose in life, which is not to focus inward, on ourselves, but outward. If we know whose image we are made in, if we embrace that, if we understand our faults and seek to improve them, if we try to always love others then we'll inspire hope.

Lastly, I really liked that the film didn't play into rampent stereotypes of disability, at least not as much as many others. This is becoming a bigger and bigger issue for me the more I study physical therapy and prepare to work with a population of people in all sorts of situations. In as much character developement as you can get in 20 minutes (not a whole lot) Will wasn't portrayed as completely helpless, he had strengths and faults like anyone else, and when he chose to turn his life around he did inspire hope, but so did each and every member of the Circus, so that he wasn't singled out as a perfect "beacon of inspiration". If anything, it showed clearly what can happen to people when we put our labels on them, our beliefs about their condition, our limitations on what they can do, and it showed that every human being has infinite value and ability to change the world - and that's as powerful a pro-life message as any in my book!