From among many others that might be highlighted, I have chosen six films released in the past 20 years that demand more than passive gazing from us as viewers and which promise to draw us into a wider space of realistic imagination. For Catholics, these are the kinds of films that beckon us toward a deeper engagement with the world as it is or as it might be. These are films that urge us to reckon with ourselves and the mystery of being human. These are also the kind of films that can forge bonds of communion between religious persons and nonreligious persons, who together may ponder and question the deeper significance of who we are, who we have been and who we might become.
Love Is Always Conditional
We want to say that love is unconditional. It seems right. It is equal parts comforting and challenging. It is comforting because if I am loved, then there is nothing I can do to lose that. It is challenging because in order to love, I have to will to be untroubled by obstacles. We do not want to say love is conditional because we fear submitting love to the twisted logic of relationship terrorism: if you do not meet my demands, I deprive you of what is good for you, or vice versa. We think of conditions as qualifications and we do not want to attach qualifications to love. So we say love is unconditional. But that is wrong. Love is always conditional.