METALHEAD: Grief and the Birth of God

Grief paralyzes. Its eerie tentacles reach deep to grab the voice. Silence is Grief’s agent, Anger its expression, and Fear is its fuel.

Cinelisciouspics is out with METALHEAD in time for Easter and you can get it by Video On Demand today.

You must see it.

Where to Begin?

First, Cinelisciouspics gifts us with a great story. The subject is eminently translatable; one might say universal.

Second, just when you think the story will follow a particular conventional turn, it does not. You will have to watch the film to see if you agree. No spoiler here.

Grief

The experience of grief does not follow a linear trajectory. There is no proper order of the often-described “stages.” METALHEAD takes up silence as grief’s agent. That is grief finds a friend in silence. But, silence is no real friend to the aggrieved.

Anger comes as both an expected, even necessary, release. But, what may be missed, and I think poignantly conveyed in METALHEAD, is that anger is fueled by fear. The circumstances vary when it comes to the catalyst for grief but at its heart our deepest emotion is fear.

METALHEAD explores the interplay between these features of grief that paralyze family and friends, even communities.

But . . .

Birth of God?

What if we could tap a powerful metaphor that would describe what it looks like when a community refuses to counter its rupture with its own grief and instead embodies its own claims? What if that were the Church, the church?

Could we take the Resurrection of Easter and also point to the event as an ongoing experience where what appears dead, not possible, becomes such in the birth of God? That is the birth as in Incarnation of the Way of Jesus embodied in real human beings.

Personally

The final scene of the film nearly had me in tears. You will have to watch to find out why.

Head over and get METALHEAD by Video On Demand. Consider it for Good Friday movie night. If you really wanted something to think about on Black Saturday, Holy Saturday to some, get a group together to watch and discuss the themes.

Once you see the film, come back and let’s have a discussion. I am going to watch it agin!