The Company Men

 

Here’s a suggestion for a date night.  Or a night with your buddies.  Or a night with the Father.

Watch The Company Men.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I have.  Every time, it’s another layer… Another layer unearthed in me.  Another layer of repentance, of hope, of fear, of courage, of God…

Buechner wrote a phenomenal book called Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In it, he does a stunning job of viewing the Gospel – the Larger Story in which we live – through three extremely different, yet true and enlightening lenses.  For in the end, Believing is seeing after all.

Let me offer three lenses to see this film…

Lens one:: the story of a young, gifted, well-intended, world-changing man.  Who, in truth, is a wounded, uninitiated, invalidated boy who’s in over his head.  It’s the story of the fierce redemption of his heart… his validation and identity restored through the brutal and beautiful intervention of The Father in his life.  What are the stages Bobby goes through in the redemption and restoration of his masculine heart?  Where is the turning point?  What is at stake?  What makes the difference in the end?

Lens two:: the story of three men – all good men at their core.  All men taken out.  Men whose worlds have been utterly disrupted through corporate downsizing.  Three different men with three very different responses to the hand they are dealt.  Where does each man take his setbacks?  How does each man answer these questions?  Where will I find Life and how will I make it last?

Lens three:: the story of four women.  Women whose men have been handed the gauntlet.  Four very different women, living very different stories, who offer very differently to their men. What is it they offer?  What story are they living in?  What is their impact on their men?  In the end, who offers femininity, with integrity?

Enjoy…