Early scenes of the Redeeming Love movie
To start the movie, the scene shows a glittering surface of a body of water. You could call it muddy depending on what you see, but I guess you’ll have to change your mind once you see the sieve that a man was using to mine gold from the river. If you’re still doubtful, the number of men going about their activities in the water using different gold mining techniques would surely wow you.
Not long after, a man’s mud-plastered face grew alive. His eyes almost popped out of its sockets to make sure he was seeing the shiny object among the sand right. And he went “whoo! Whoo! Whoo!” with his arms raised like an army general who had just won a battle, but this time in a raggedly brown-ish cloth combination with his trousers soaked to the knees.
You would think that the shouts of “whoo!” by this unnamed man would make the other miners pause their activities, but just a few did look up to see who the lucky man was, others just faced their businesses. The scene finishes and moves to signal the beginning of the adapted movie “REDEEMING LOVE”
This time, we’re brought to a bustling city in California called pair-a-dice. Did you pronounce that as ‘paradise’? cos’ that place had a prison-like paradise for some girls. An expressionless girl looks out the window of the brothel while a man pulls up his trousers and pours gold-sand unto a surface. He leaves the room with other parts of his body unclad. Outside the brothel, there gathered some lustful men with some white paper in their hands—tickets I guess, all of them waiting to get to lay with the most-priced prostitute at pair-a-dice. Angel.
“Vagabonds! Show me your tickets” Magowan sort of growls at the excited men.
“One more charmed man, she’s done shagging for the day! She’s all worn out.” Duchess shouts from where she’s standing with Magowan to the men who groaned in response and clamoured amongst themselves to show their displeasure at their dashed hopes.
“I have plenty of other girls, Chinese, African, Spanish, Dealer’s choice! But if you want Angel…” Duchess continued her animated lust-for-money fueled speech and the men cheered.
“…You’ll have to come back tomorrow. And by guess or by golly, it could be your lucky day!”
Angel who continued to watch from the window stopped being expressionless as she remembered a very old sad memory of her as a little girl. The memory ended with her mother reassuring her that she loved her more than anything or anyone in this whole wide world.
In the next scene, Angel and her colleagues…if that’s the right way to describe her friends, were discussing their woes in the most fun way.
“My mother ran off when I was five, and my aunt took me in, Aunty Priscilla. She used a switch on me, at least twice a day. Look.” Lucky raised her white lingerie to show the switch scars on her back.
“The bitch with the switch,” Lucky said and chuckled. “She was the meanest woman I ever knew, meaner than the duchess. She would make me cut a fresh switch from the tree in the front yard every day. So, one day, she was out having tea with her phoney friends, so I took an axe and chopped the tree down. It went through the house, crushing her fancy-ass parlour. The girls laughed and clinked their glasses of wine together like they just won a lottery.
“Yeah, God I just wish that I had stuck around to see the look Priss’s face when she got home. and sometimes I wish that I could go back and say that I’m sorry, maybe my life might have been different”
“How so?” Angel asked, swirling the glass of wine in her hand.
“well, might not have ended up here just being a mattress hole for whoremongers, just collecting gold dust that isn’t mine.” The atmosphere kind of turned sour after Lucky finished saying a piece of her mind.
“My father sold me for three ounces of gold. And he told me that I was going to stay in a palace. I thought he meant a royal palace, like a princess.” Mai Ling said sarcastically and the trio laughed again at their misery.
“Angel, you’ve got any big plans?” Mai Ling asked.
“Plans?” Angel asked as though the word was foreign.
“You’ve got to hope for something more in this world outside of this…paradise,” Lucky advised.
“Hope for what?”
“You can’t get by without hope.”
“I get by.”
“How?”
“Never look back, never look forward,” Angel replied matter-of-factly and downed some more wine from her cup.
Next, we’re introduced to the good boy, hardworking and good looking farmer, Michael Hosea who went into the house of the Lord after a long day’s work to pray to God. He prayed to God for a few moments on his knees before getting up from the prayer. Michael turned to leave but had to turn back abruptly when he remembered something. He went on and asked that God provide him with someone who would share all he had been given with. He asked for a sign and turned to leave again.
And once again, he turned towards the cross, suggesting some signs.
“Maybe she likes fishing,” He said and chuckled. “You know, maybe she has long legs. Anyway, you know the kind that I need. I trust you.” He said to God like a spoilt but respectful son of a rich man.
Review of the movie, redeeming love
I might have to watch the redeeming love movie two more times to grasp the full thing. And I’m not understanding the mosquitoes that are rallying around me right now. I might as well get my drowsy self under the mosquito net very soon.
The lead actors were incredible in how natural they seemed onscreen. Tom Lewis who played the male lead role is said to be a huge star in the making. Abigail Cowen, who played the role of Angel also has a striking screen presence.
The other characters, such as Angel’s mother, Angel’s estranged father, the Duke and some others seemed to metamorphose in accordance to the time portrayed in the scenes. The character who experienced the most change was Paul, Michael Hosea’s brother-in-law, whose character was brought to life by the change we see the change in him after getting married to Miriam. If you don’t understand this, I guess you’d better go watch the movie or read the novel “redeeming love” by Francine Rivers first as a starter.
And what good it later turned to be that Michael let his wife go without chasing after her. She was able to rescue two little girls that would have lived miserable lives as she did as a little girl. And alongside, got to reconcile with the God of her mother—the chain with the crucifix symbol on it became a thing.
But oh Michael, he was really a fool. He was a fully surrendered person unto God.
Production of the Redeeming Love movie.
The screening received backlashes from people who had read the novel but wasn’t willing to see what they had read on screen. The movie was graphic and showed to detail how little girls are abused, how dysfunctional homes works and even how a little girl can be made to witness the murder of a man. I don’t understand people who read the book but complain when the movie was made. I think people prefer that stories like that be whitewashed and made clean for people to watch and just say things like “Ah, just another movie by a Christian that is not tackling any real issues.”
Stop it! Sometimes I wonder why people always prefer projects that scratch the surface. They want things that would be palatable for everyone. The movie is rated PG-13 for crying out loud. What were they expecting, a Tom and Jerry cartoon? Child abuse is real, dysfunctional families are real, trauma is real, murder in front of a minor is real, God’s love being portrayed through a human is real.
Sometimes I wonder how people forget that those real-life happenings that did happen in the Bible were not whitewashed because it was going to be entered into a Holy Book. If so, the Song of Solomon should be removed in its entirety from the Bible. So it is with the real world. Fiction is not, and can never be just a compilation of imaginations. It draws us to the real thing.
Compared to the novel, the movie was relatively short and somewhat brought abruptly to an end. It is impossible to actually fit that big a novel into a 2-hours, 14 minutes movie. The movie was triggering and I think that’s one of the things a good movie should do.
