Thinking Through the Movie, "The Grey"

Matt, Cherie, and I went to see the move The Grey  while we visited Matt last weekend in Fayetteville, NC.  It was a very thought provoking movie. While I did not enjoy it, because it is sad, lonely, and takes a profoundly depressing view of life, as I contemplated the movie afterward, from a worldview standpoint there is a lot to commend it.

Short synopsis:  A plane crashes in the wilds of Alaska or Canada.  There are seven survivors.  One by one they are eaten by wolves until the last man, Liam Neeson, the anti-hero, is left alive facing the Alpha wolf in the wolves' den.  We are left to decide for ourselves if anyone or anything survives that battle.  Depressing movie, right? Yes, which I would argue is one of the things to commend the movie.

The worldview of the movie is fatalistic and materialistic.  Liam Neeson's character is lonely (we find out late in the film that his wife is dead), and pretty much does not believe in God or the supernatural.  The other men in the movie are also interested only in this earth, a little money, women, and their families (seemingly in that order).  The movie intimates that there is nothing beyond this life; that you deal with the cards which fate hands you; and if life is hard and you end up plane wrecked in the wilderness than it sucks to be you.  There is no ultimate meaning to be found in that.

Towards the end of the movie when Liam Neeson is the only one surviving and in desperate straits, he cries out to God to help him, but receives no answer.  The skies are grey and silent.  He says, "F*** it, I'll just do it myself."  In other words, "If I am to survive this ordeal (and by extension life itself), I have only myself to trust in, I can't count on anyone or anything, especially not God."

While I do not subscribe to that particular worldview, in a weird way it is helpful.  I could not think of a better way to fully demonstrate the futility of a worldview without God in it, than the movie The Grey.  Life has no ultimate meaning.  Liam Neeson has nothing to live for after his wife dies.  The only hope he has is in the past (when his wife was alive).  Now he is just fighting the depressing realities of life, trying to put off death for one more day, and if he dies, he will die fighting.  Now there is a worldview to live for, right?  Something to add meaning and color to one's existence.

It's this depressing working out of materialism that makes the movie succeed, although whether or not those who created it wanted it that way, I do not know.  Perhaps they are Christians, because I could not think of a better vehicle to point out the futility and ultimate hopelessness of life than the The Grey.  Thanks writer and director.