Extra Ordinary Ideas

Saved!

I’m trying to figure out why I love this movie so much. I saw it with my brother last summer, rented the DVD last month, and bought the thing last night.

Mary Cummings is a good Christian girl in a tight-knight, born-again suburban community somewhere warm enough that everyone has a swimming pool and the leaves never fall off the trees. She has a fluffy pink room and a fluffy pink life, khaki school uniforms and an uncious Christian girl band.

When her boyfriend confides that he is gay, she courageously surrenders her maidenhead to save him from his fate (it’s what Jesus would do), only to see him sent away to a religious reform school for the rest of the year.

A month or two later, she learns she is pregnant, which leads her to question everything she believes in. She eventually finds new faith in her formerly self-absorbed mother, a couple of raucous high-school outcasts (“Don’t you have a church to desecrate or something?”), and the minister’s perfect son (“Most of the boys at our school look like NASA employees. Not Patrick!”).

So why can’t let go of this film? It could certainly be the stunning screenplay:
Roland: Is that Mary? What is she doing downtown?
Cassandra: There’s only one reason a good Christian girl goes to the Planned Parenthood.
Roland: She’s planting a pipe bomb?!

And then there is the acting. Macaulay Culkin alone, as the pitilessly cynical paraplegic horn dog (“She’s going to show her boobs! Thank you, Jesus!”) justifies the movie.

Possibly it’s because I’ve had two friends exactly like the sweetly vicious, domineering and hypocritical Hilary Faye (“She actually tried to exorcise you? That was nice of her, I guess.”)

Or maybe it’s the frothy sweet romance between Mary and Patrick. It’s wonderful to imagine that no matter how messed up your life is, a soul mate with floppy hair will notice that you’re managing with grace and courage.

It’s also appealing that the film is about a close community of imperfect people. They’ve known each other long enough and well enough that, while they don’t necessarily like each other, they do love each other. Possibly I’m homesick, having few such keepers in Cambridge.

But I think it’s the laser fine, sharp but painlessly delivered theme that carries the day. The characters in Saved! are imperfect, often shallow and sometimes ridiculous (“So, like, which country has the worst heathens?”). But the film manages to condemn hypocrisy without creating villains. In Christian fashion, it hates the sin and not the sinner, allowing the viewer to imagine the camera’s unflinching lens turned on him or herself.

Posted by Marie Gryphon on November 28, 2004