A Case for Love
Grace-Based Films
“We see signs everywhere saying ‘Love Wins’ … but doesn’t that feel a little naive, or even irresponsible?” In a polarized world where fear, hatred, and violence have exploded, is love dead?
Inspired by the teaching of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, A Case for Love goes after those questions, and makes its case, through a wide-ranging, engaging series of real-person vignettes and on-the-street interviews. They’re wrapped around moments of conversation with the bishop and reflections by other cultural voices, including Jon Meacham, Sam Waterston, Al Roker, rabbi Shoshanah Conover, peace activist Mohamed Elasnousi, Pete Buttigieg, John Danforth, and Kelly Brown Douglas.
Opening with brief problem-establishing clips of societal violence, racial and otherwise, the film moves quickly into a series of seven in-depth “chapters” — Being Dealt A Bad Hand, Love and Loss, Exclusion, Making it Easy, Answering the Call, Hope, and Love Is — that provide the framework for what is really an extended fluid, inviting — and entertaining — conversation.
To talk about entertaining, when referring to in-depth pieces about people who’ve survived sexual exploitation, racial injustice, refugee horrors, wartime trauma, bodily and personal rejections at the deepest levels — can seem like a poor choice of words. But director Brian Ide understands that we are a people and generations whose public media worlds center on entertainment. We have high visual and aural standards for what we’ll pay attention to, and go to a box office for, even if we can’t quite articulate them.
To tell and delve into such personal stories in a way that doesn’t turn an hour and 40-minute feature film into tedium, but rather pulls you along and into it, is a remarkable cinematic achievement. It offers a great choice of subjects, succinct pithy on-the-street comment captures, back and forth flow of stories and content that move easily in and out of themselves, and personable human beings who share of themselves in genuinely testimony moments in the best sense.
Eleven in-depth personal-story pieces, including part of Bishop Curry’s — woven roughly two to a chapter — articulate movements of love that changed otherwise dark and difficult stories into moments of light. And along the way they make the case for love.
“It was God that had me write a letter to the judge that made my life completely different 17 years later.” “My suffering has reason … we need to look out for others more.” “Don’t overthink it. … See an opportunity? Go for it. We decided we were just gonna love, and go with it.” “You don’t need to invest a lot to give someone else happiness.” “It pays to believe that you were put into the world to make a difference. We have agency … let’s do the something we can do.”
“When we talk about naivete,” Bishop Curry says, “we’re really talking about the ideals we don’t want to deal with. … It’s not complex. To bless and care for you also blesses and cares for me.”
Or as a young Black man raps in a kind of film coda: “Always showed me love / when I needed love / so when push came to shove / there was love.”
A Case For Love is a good film on a lot of levels. Well done.
The Rev. Len Freeman is adjunct clergy at St. David’s Church in Minnetonka, Minnesota.
