SUMMER IN THE FOREST
Director: Randall Wright
Cert: PG 107 mins
Summer in the Forest is a wonderfully gentle, peaceful film, that has a lot to teach us about Christian love and humility.
It’s an uplifting documentary about L’Arche, where people with (and without) mental and physical disabilities live in community together. Their vision includes: ‘living with diversity and difference, we open ourselves up to be challenged and grow’.
Place of peace
In 1964, the philosopher Jean Vanier successfully managed to get some people released from institutions that mistreated them. He then tried to do things differently. While there were struggles at first, L’Arche is now a place of peace (the present day being much of the focus of the film), and Vanier still lives there as part of the community. As he describes it: ‘It’s not a utopia; it’s a home.’
The film is narrated by Vanier, and follows several of the residents, showing their dignity and individual quirks. With its unhurried pace and laid-back observational style, the film eschews most traditional narrative structure, but this approach actually works here.
In combination with the impressive naturalistic cinematography, the film reminds us how we can be thankful for the little things, such as a character moments, colours, and the way that sunlight illuminates things.
The film shows that love is usually simple, practical, relational, and long-term. This is in contrast to the ways of the world, where people continually vie for power and strive to impress others. Genuine love, on the other hand, tends to cultivate peace and tranquillity, and the film conveys this sense very well.
Jean Vanier’s philosophy is profound, yet vague. The film is not an apologetics manual; though there are other resources for that. However, there’s immense value in the film’s depiction of what Christlike love, and a culture informed by it, can look like: gentle, humble, peaceful, and providing an atmosphere for human flourishing.
Summer in the Forest came out on Friday 23 June. For a list of screenings, see www.summerintheforest.com
