Fantasy

A movie with spiritual themes and the added bonus of an Orthodox Study Guide available for checkout. ( )

Watch it.
The first six and a half minutes taken as a whole are amazing and worth it. Scattered throughout are complex bits on love and family (how, being strong can be a way to hide, how some things we do we think are loving are hurtful for others--see his relationship with his son, and how he resolves these things).
I find the opening scene of falling in love works and doesn't work. The following scene of the bittersweetness of family life with the comedian in a suit is moving. But in the movie it's a carcrash that kills their children, which I find more useful as a metaphor for their jobs killing their inner children. I think the movie would've been better if she had killed herself because their lives had become slowly twisted into something they hated, rather than because of arbitrary car crashes. (It would've been both more disturbing, and more true.)
I also think the climax doesn't quite work, but there's something true to it nonetheless.
It's a beautiful film that made me cry for sorrow and for joy at points, and made me think and feel differently about life. ( )