I liked this movie for the way it shows the family's closeness, mutual respect and love. Having been brought up by very religiuos catholic parents, who prayed a lot and forced me to go to church all the time, but raised me without showing true love, tenderness, beating and humiliating me in many ways, I watched the relations in this family with admiration. So for me the main message of this movie was that if you want to have an influence on your children and have a close relationship with them surrounding your them with unconditional love, showing them respect and gentleness is crucial.
Nothing was forced here, everything stemmed from the shared closeness, respecting boundaries, spending time together. It showed the strong marriage of the parents and the example they set in always being steady, peaceful, balanced and generous as the foundation of the children's future.
These are not exclusively Christian values, however. I brought up my daughter according to them, although I rejected religion early in my youth. I gave her something more though, the freedom to make her own choices and mistakes, to think for herself, to ask questions, evolve and be independent.
In this film, the most important Christain value concerns (surprise, surprise) sexuality. Even being kissed is portrayed as immoral! The girl's behaviour is very confusing to me. In life either you are attracted to someone or not. It seems unclear if she was attracted to Jared or wasn't.
Did she like the kissing and thought it sinful or was she simply not enjoying it? The message seems to be very puritanical though - kissing is a sin, as it leads to unholy urges. This suppression of the body, of our natural expression of love seems to be one of the greatest sin of Christianity.
The greater "sin", to me, is shown in first scene of the film, its lietmotif, the obscenely expensive diamond ring Grace is fixated on receiving.
To a really spiritual person this doesn't matter. That's not what Jesus taught.
What disturbed me more, was the contempt and aggresivity shown by Grace's exemplary Christain father to the estate agent. Again, would Jesus approve? Where's the true Christian love and compassion gone?
The lesson here is that the blind observance of some rules, called religion, is a long distance from spirituality, from true reflection. The world we're presented with is black and white. Every non-Christian here is grotesue, idiotic or violent.
The saddest thing in the movie is the mother, cut off from her feminine intuition and wisdom, blindly following her husband's judgemets, she has thoughtlessly formed her daughter to be her replica: once married, she will just switch her father's authority to her husband's and will bring up her daughter in the same fashion.
Dear Christians, please kindly ask yourselves: is your religion actually really helping you to love everybody? Are you the uniting or dividing force in the world...? Always double-check your values. Dig deeper.
Oh, and the last thing. The inclusion of the lighthearted shooting competition scene deeply disturbed me. Christian values? Hello?
Nothing was forced here, everything stemmed from the shared closeness, respecting boundaries, spending time together. It showed the strong marriage of the parents and the example they set in always being steady, peaceful, balanced and generous as the foundation of the children's future.
These are not exclusively Christian values, however. I brought up my daughter according to them, although I rejected religion early in my youth. I gave her something more though, the freedom to make her own choices and mistakes, to think for herself, to ask questions, evolve and be independent.
In this film, the most important Christain value concerns (surprise, surprise) sexuality. Even being kissed is portrayed as immoral! The girl's behaviour is very confusing to me. In life either you are attracted to someone or not. It seems unclear if she was attracted to Jared or wasn't.
Did she like the kissing and thought it sinful or was she simply not enjoying it? The message seems to be very puritanical though - kissing is a sin, as it leads to unholy urges. This suppression of the body, of our natural expression of love seems to be one of the greatest sin of Christianity.
The greater "sin", to me, is shown in first scene of the film, its lietmotif, the obscenely expensive diamond ring Grace is fixated on receiving.
To a really spiritual person this doesn't matter. That's not what Jesus taught.
What disturbed me more, was the contempt and aggresivity shown by Grace's exemplary Christain father to the estate agent. Again, would Jesus approve? Where's the true Christian love and compassion gone?
The lesson here is that the blind observance of some rules, called religion, is a long distance from spirituality, from true reflection. The world we're presented with is black and white. Every non-Christian here is grotesue, idiotic or violent.
The saddest thing in the movie is the mother, cut off from her feminine intuition and wisdom, blindly following her husband's judgemets, she has thoughtlessly formed her daughter to be her replica: once married, she will just switch her father's authority to her husband's and will bring up her daughter in the same fashion.
Dear Christians, please kindly ask yourselves: is your religion actually really helping you to love everybody? Are you the uniting or dividing force in the world...? Always double-check your values. Dig deeper.
Oh, and the last thing. The inclusion of the lighthearted shooting competition scene deeply disturbed me. Christian values? Hello?