There’s this scene in the movie Saved that always makes me cry. I was just struck with why for the first time. Upon learning her boyfriend is a homosexual, Mary (Jenna Malone) tries to “heal his sickness” by losing her virginity with him. The intimate encounter yeilds more confusion for the boyfriend and a bun in the oven for Mary. The scene that always gets me is when she gets off the bus after visiting the pregnancy crisis center. Walking past a church, she stops and looks up at the cross on the steeple. The camera looks down on her from the towering height of the cross. Looking up at us, with anger and brokeness, she begins, “Shit. …” The camera begins a slow descent. Mary continues – a little more desperate now, “Fuck. …” Smoothly, gracefully and seemingly intentionally, we continue down toward her until we are face to face. With quiet desperation she closes the scene with a resolute “God-damn.”
The reason this moves me is because the camera movement communicates Christ’s movement in the scene. Mary is hurting tremendously. She’s mad at God, but his compassion is unwavering. “The Cross” in this scene descends toward her despite her tongue. As an on-looker, the camera movement forces me to set aside judgement and honestly engage in this dialogue. I don’t know why I’m posting about this. It’s just something that suddenly struck me and made me cry. I felt like sharing that.