Understanding Spirituality and Culture through Christ
The movie 'The Town' is a well made. There is subtlety in the script, pace to the story and intense realism. The movie is a realistic depiction of modern lifestyle. It impels me to critique the modernistic worldview that undergirds the idea of the good and the bad in this movie.
A bank robber, Ben Affleck, falls in love with the victim of one of the heists. Among the gang thieves, Ben Affleck is portrayed as the good gentle hearted guy and his childhood buddy, Jeremy resorts brutality too quickly. You get to hate Jeremy’s guts and love Ben Affleck who is powerful yet avoids hurting people 'physically'. What struck me about the movie was the sense of stridency with which the movie upholds goodness as having more to do with the physical than the spiritual. It is a movie true to the materialism of this age where morality is confined to the realm of the 'material' - only that which can be touched and felt.
Jeremy is shown as a bad guy because he hurts people to intimidate them. He does not mind killing friends if he knows that they'll betray him to the FBI. Ben is shown in good light as a guy with a conscience who has become a thief because of inexorable circumstances. Ben does not hurt people physically, but he hurts them emotionally. Strangely, in the movie’s depiction, that he hurts people emotionally does not factor in as moral bankruptcy.
Ben uses a woman, Jeremy’s sister, for his sexual pleasure and then shoves her off when he finds a new one, the victim of the heist, all the while maintaining the facade of a good guy trying to be the best he can be, given the unfortunate circumstances of his childhood. When Ben Affleck falls in love with his victim, that he already has Jeremy’s sister for a lover whose daughter she says is his does not pose a moral dilemma to this guy with a golden heart. Having decided to elope with his new lover, he just shoves her and the kid out of his apartment.
My problem with the movie is that it makes it appear as though he is 'justified' in cutting lose from Jeremy’s sister, now that he 'truly' loves another. The painful scene of the shoving-off is entirely depicted from Ben Affleck's ‘alpha-male-to-be-pitied-for-a-broken-childhood’ perspective. In the scene of separation, you hear the kid crying in the distance when he and the kid's mother are having an altercation. He lifts the kid, walks out the door, leaves her outside the door and asks the mother to follow. Period.
The scene is shot in a way to make the viewer oblivious to the horrid pain he, the guy with a golden heart, is causing the weaker ones. I would have had a better appreciation for the scene if it faithfully depicted the horrible pain this guy was causing the lady and the little three year old. That would have been more realistic as it would have showed that Ben Affleck, who is portrayed as a good-natured victim of his circumstances was himself, a horrible victimizer.
The movie instead of showing him as the victimizer, somehow justifies his spiritually hurting his girlfriend and her daughter now that he has 'connected' with a new girl. That movie does not call a spade a spade and depict Ben to be as much a victimizer as was Jeremy. It is just that methods of victimization are different. Jeremy hurts the body, Ben kills the soul.
The reason why the modern man is often morally blind to hurting the soul, and the reason why Ben is portrayed as a better guy, is because modern morality does not transcend the ‘material’ bodily reality of life. Modern morality, relative as it is, says beating a person is wrong, but betraying the person’s love isn't. It says one can keep eloping with new a lover as long as there are no strings attached and one does not physically abuse the ex.
Even if there are strings, if the pull of new love is strong enough modern morality 'justifies' the snapping-off of the commitment that holds one back from reaching out for the Modern Dream of a finding a sexually fulfilling relationship with no strings. The only problem is that God did not create sexual relationship to be cheap, whether one likes it or not there will always be strings that bond and bind.
In fact, once Ben’s true colors are apparent to the new victim-turned-lover, she asks, "wasn't it enough that you messed my life already (through your heist and the following FBI harassment), did you also have to f*** me?” She asks him to get the hell out of her life. Even here, the guy is depicted to come on top, as a guy with a sensitive heart, he gives here all the money he made in the heist and then says an empty platitude that goes something like "I'll meet you again in this life or the next".
In depicting such partial alpha-male centered materialistic reality, the movie is a lie. But the movie is a true reflection of the lie of the modern lifestyle. It is a faithful reflection of the twisted reality of life as perceived by modern man. If the movie and the depiction of the scenes depict anything it depicts the problems with the modern worldview of life which is preoccupied with the material at the cost of discounting the spiritual and paying a costly price for that. After all, man is not just flesh and blood, he is also mind and spirit.