Rectify | A Movie About Forgiveness

Generally what I post here is about Israel but this is a review of a TV series I watched last week on Netflix called Rectify. To me, forgiveness is the bottom line of this movie - but it is also the bottom line of all human relationships... including Israel. We cannot get anywhere in spiritual living without recognizing the significance of forgiveness to our well being - body, soul and spirit. Unforgiveness will spare none of those tripartite aspects of our being because forgivness is godliness almost like no other thing in life that we choose. For Israelis as for the rest of us, taking the divine nature that is expressed in forgiveness is crucial to our healing, life and future. Donna Diorio

"Rectify is one of the most emotionally acute shows in TV history"

Rectify is not a movie for everyone. It is slow moving, cerebral almost, but also down home where everybody lives really. It is a story about an 18-year old boy who has been on death row for 19-years after confessing to raping and murdering his 16-year old girlfriend. The story picks up at the point he is being released. The sentence is finally vacated when DNA tests show it was not him who raped the girl.

The family dynamics and the small town Georgia dynamics are what this film is about. Also the long struggle of a man who has spent more half his life in solitary confinement, having been raped multiple times as a boy entering into prison. He has a tough row to hoe to find his way back to any kind of semblance of normal, and even on the outside, not much is going for him.

I found this a profound movie about the kind of things that people can be up against getting over past traumas, things other people cannot even fathom knowing only partially what they have been through. It is not just about the imprisoned man's emotions, it is about all of the characters and believe me when I say, I have never seen a movie that probed the emotions of a network of people caught up in such a life event as this movie.

There is an element of faith in God in the movie but it is not really explored as a serious option. Truly someone as broken, traumatized and done such an injustice in life, is going to need God to heal them and put them back together. Still the movie has given me a lot to think about and if I do find a book available, I will probably read that too. Profound. Something I will watch again at a later date because it is just that good.

"Sundance’s lovely, little seen drama wrapped its four-season run with beauty and forgiveness"

This really is a movie about forgiveness. I woke up thinking about it, how you saw the the emotions and reactions to events by so many people involved in it, then you saw them come around to the point of forgiving each other independently, separately. I remember thinking as I was watching that the different family members were forgiving each other over some really deep seated emotions and reactions and how they must be a pretty emotionally evolved extended family to do that. I realize now that it is just wishful fantasy on the part of the writers - who see correctly that forgiveness is the real thing that heals people and relationships.

But they do not see how intricately God is involved in that level of forgiveness. One or two people may enter into forgiveness without relationship with God but the whole family and the people in the town? Not at all in the realm of possibility.

"To err is human, to forgive is divine." Forgiving comes from the Divine nature. God forgives us, so we can forgive others...otherwise human nature is not to forgive. We know this is so even as we look around in even the body of Christ. So many do not see the correlation that is made in the Matthew 18 parable that Jesus told. And even if we do see see it and know it, the temptations of the flesh - our humanity - is to hold onto forgiveness, not releasing people for the things we hold against them. We hold on to unforgiveness at our own peril.

I did love this movie. Obviously it was written by someone searching for God, but who doesn't want or believe the answer can be God. But they are so close to realizing to source of forgiveness is supernatural. 

Forgiveness, I am beginning to believe, is one of the greatest, single most powerful keys to the Kingdom of God. Much has been written about faith, hope and love, but the choice to walk in forgiveness is the down and dirty part of the lofty spiritual ideals.