Movies I own: "Pieces of April" & "Moulin Rouge"

As I look over my movie collection, I notice I own quite a few films heavy on romanticism. I don't mean movies heavy on romance: the intense love stories and the date-night comedies, although there are plenty of those. I mean that I am particularly drawn to romantic characters: those who embrace a quixotic spirit, who make bold and sweeping gestures, who live lives of foolish risks.

A perfect example would be "Pieces of April," a movie I've loved for years and just recently added to my shelves. There is nothing much remarkable that happens in the film: It takes place all on one Thanksgiving day, with a grown daughter inviting her family over for turkey dinner for the first time. Most people have probably experienced something similar on the holidays. But in April Burns's case, this invitation is a romantic gesture. It's an improbable stretch, a hopeful longing. She, who was such an aggravation to her parents, who rebelled and took drugs, who left them emptied and hollowed out, is inviting them back into relationship. It's the story of the prodigal son, but with the wayward youth throwing the feast, and with the abandoned parents unsure of their reception.

Watching the film requires -- well, I was going to say a suspension of disbelief, but that's not quite right -- rather, a tenacious belief that hope might find its reward. Of course it makes no sense that, if your oven were broken and you had to cook your turkey, you could knock on the doors of neighbors in your New York walkup and find people willing to help you out. It's unreasonable, it's absurd. But it's also the reason that you never try it in the first place. A low chance of success so often leads us to give up before we start. The sheer unreasonableness of hoping for kindness or grace, for help, or for reconciliation, is too powerful in our minds to let us take the risk. April Burns may live in a movie but she does not live in a fantasy world; she lives in our world, but with courage, and moxie, and perseverance.

Why am I drawn to these films? Why do I need them handy? I think it's because my natural instincts don't take me toward romanticism. I am careful, I am hesitant, I am practical. I so rarely do anything "just because." It sounds bad to admit, but I do not spontaneously volunteer to throw a party for someone, or toss out my weekend plans for a road trip, or buy a gift I happen to see without running my mind through a cost-benefit analysis. I wish I could be more free, to follow those romantic impulses when I get them -- spontaneous gestures of love for my wife, my friends, for the stranger, for God. Why look to the effect on my schedule or my budget or my energy reserves first, every time? What are we made for if not a full and unhesitant immersion into the thick of life, a cannonball into the deep end?

I've been making a few strides in this area in the last few months. It helps, maybe, that we have a little more money than we used to, and that I'm working a little bit less. I don't feel under as much pressure to portion out every ounce of energy and every dollar with caution. It also helps that I've been talking through and working on this characteristic of mine in my church small group. But more than that, I think I've broken through to a place of wanting to make that romantic gesture, to do more than offer a mere proportional response. I want to brainstorm and plot out unique and special ways to make my affection and enthusiasm tangible. I want to be inexplicably outlandish -- inexplicable even to myself, maybe especially to myself.

One of the turning points recently, I think, was when I popped in my DVD of "Moulin Rouge" again to watch with my wife. I'd seen it four or five times before, but it had been a while, and this time it hit me differently. I had embraced the film at first for its warped, unprecedented use of pop songs, its evocative design and decor, its energy and pace. It's a wild ride, sensual and exhilarating and heartbreaking in a single moment. But the actual love story I saw as something of a contrivance. The film centers on a young writer in 1899 Paris who falls in love with a star courtesan and pens for her a musical of their love story. Their improbable relationship, sparked by a simple glance across a crowded room and a few minutes alone together, seemed to me just an excuse to set the rock-circus in motion. Satine and Christian were just constructs, brought together by dramatic convention; it was the same as every Hollywood story, shallowly focused on the intensities of new love and not on the steadfastness of growing a relationship over time.

But watching it this time, I had to wonder: so what? So what if the writer feels only the emotion of giddy discovery -- at least he acts on it. Maybe he is naive and rash to put his life in danger for someone he doesn't know he can trust -- but who wants a reasonable lover? Who wants affection in measured doses, of a respectable degree? Should our passions not consume us, overrun us, at least some of the time? Would a person like Satine, broken and bruised by the men in her life, have any affection at all for a timid and respectful suitor? Would we not all wish for someone to revel in us, to be inspired by us, to throw out his or her arms and sing to the stars for us?

How do I love God? How do I love my neighbor? How do I love my wife and my son? Do I love them in reasonable measures, with adequate effort, or do I embrace the romantic gesture? Do I make myself a fool -- an impassioned, spontaneous, outlandish, holy fool? May I seek such moments in my life. May I keep hold of the authentic desire to overflow with love.