Cold Concrete and Brilliant Blues

I have a new favorite movie, it's so simple, and yet so beautiful, like so many things in life. And it's only five minutes and one second long, how convenient!

You can watch the short film here.

 Their description of the movie says, "A man, confined to a door-less, window-less cube is helped to freedom by a mysterious stranger. He finds that the ultimate source of freedom is found within and explores what his response should be to this liberating gift."

With my worldview, I saw this movie as a beautiful, simple rendition of Christ's love freeing us, and I think that's what the movie-makers intended as well.

"Freedom!" an unknown, unseen voice cries. Through a hole in the door comes a sign painted with the word "Liberte," clattering to the floor at the feet of the startled prisoner. He picks it up, confused, and the hand reaches through the door. The hand is in color, while the room, man, and sign are all black and white. The mysterious hand turns the sign around, causing it to point downwards, towards the prisoner's freedom.

The mysterious stranger's shirt-sleeve is red, which we later see is the same color as the prisoner's jumpsuit. This shows that the stranger used to be a prisoner too. Once he was given his freedom, he went on to spread the word and help free the other prisoners.

After removing his floor, the prisoner finds a secret door, which opens up to pure light, which gives life and color to his drab surroundings. He goes through the hole, and comes back in color, puts his floor tiles through, and they come up as grass. His dim lamp becomes a brilliant sun-like source of light. Finally, he strips part of his wall off, and when he plasters it back up, it becomes a doorway to trees, wind, sun, a free, alive, vibrant world. He walks through the door to his freedom, and his concrete prison cell disintegrates.

All that is left is the Liberte sign, which the freed man picks up. Suddenly he hears a cry from the other side of the bushes. Walking through, the man's jaw drops and the sign falls from his hand in shock, the field before him is full of cube-like concrete prisons just like his own.

A look of comprehension accompanied with a smile slowly grow on the man's face. He stoops, picks up the sign, and runs towards the buildings, ready to set the other prisoners free.

That last scene is my favorite, the last few seconds of the film - running towards the other prisoners, filled with joy to share with them the freedom he has found.

It's so beautiful. So simple, so pure, so awesome.

See, we are the prisoners. We're trapped in a little gray cube, windowless, lifeless. We know we aren't free, but we don't know what we're missing. Then someone comes along and shows us freedom. We might not get it at first, but they turn the sign around and point us in the right direction. At first, maybe we don't know what to do with this, but we explore and learn, and slowly our drab prison becomes colorful, full of light and life. And finally, when we're ready, it opens up to real freedom and our prison walls fall down.

We're just so happy to be free, to feel the soft air on our faces, feel the sweet grass beneath our toes, feel the warm sun gently brush our faces. But when we start to look around, we discover we weren't the only prisoners, that there are many who still need to be set free.

And so we go. Not because we have to, but because we want to. We've been freed from our prisons and we want others to be free as well.

And that's the gospel. That we have been freed from our prisons of sin through love is the first, beautiful, awesome, incredible and unbelievable part, but there's a part two. Part two is that we, in turn, tell others of this love to free them from their solitary confinement by sin.

It's not just about us being freed and loved and then going on our merry way, receiving a free gift of love and then living life however we want. We should be dedicating the rest of our lives to, in turn, freeing others.

It's not an obligation, it's not like we have to tell X number of people about Jesus to fulfill the requirement and get to go live our lives. Our life is to tell people about Jesus, because He is just absolutely wonderful and we want to.

That's why I love this film. Because of the little smile on the man's face as he goes to tell his fellow prisoners about the freedom he has been given.