The Hiding Place

Aug 15, 2023 | News

Moving into film

Transforming Ministry is now experimenting with film reviews, and Andrew Carr has started the process with a review of The Hiding Place, about Corrie Ten Boom. We are keen for everyone to see this review, as it is a first for us, but we anticipate future reviews being available in the Subscribers’ area of the website.

If you would be interested in reviewing a film for Transforming Ministry, please contact editor@transformingministry.co.uk in the first instance.

The Hiding Place (2023 USA film)
Certificate: 12A
Runtime: 153 minutes
Director: Laura Matula
Cast: Nan Gurley, John Schuck, Carrie Tillis

Based upon Corrie Ten Boom’s memoir, this is an emotive film version of a stage play of her moving and powerful book. I was reminded of a quote from movie satire The Player (1992) “No stars, just talent!” which summarises the quality of the three lead performances, especially Carrie Tillis (Betsie Ten Boom).

It’s not an easy watch, its subject matter and theme are sombre, turning as they do to a dark page in human history. The staging and lighting with the narrative switching effectively between the characters’ past and their then-present is played out on a revolving stage. The theme broad – Anti-Semitism, Hatred of the Other, the Holocaust; the focus narrow – what would you personally have done in the same situation?

The sequences in Ravensbrück camp are powerful yet understated, the communion scene in particular is extraordinary. It stays with you… ‘forgiveness must first be a scandal if it is to have any power at all’ which is said and shown by Corrie (Nan Gurley) forgiving a former Nazi captor.

Not a film to passively watch, but to be engaged with and to ask ourselves why we are potentially allowing the circumstances that caused the events back then to happen again today?

ANDREW CARR

July – Ben Jonson: On my First Son

Jul 31, 2023 | News

Shakespeare’s contemporary Jonson is best remembered as a playwright, but in this poignant and very personal piece his own feelings are laid bare.

He ponders on the paradox of faith and grief – why grieve for someone who has gone to glory? Is it ourselves we grieve for in the absence of a beloved one?

The poem also plays upon the fact that both father and son have the same name – Benjamin (Genesis 35: 18). So the line between the child Ben and his father Ben is blurred. The father’s pain at the lost diminishes him. But by drawing attention to the meaning of the name, ‘child of my right hand’, Jonson recalls the biblical parallels – not only with the youngest son of Jacob but also with that other Son who now sits at the right hand of his Father. And this reminds us that God has walked not only the path of pain before us, but also the path of agonising grief.

            Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
                My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
            Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
              Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
            O, could I lose all father now! For why
                Will man lament the state he should envy?
            To have so soon ‘scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
                And if no other misery, yet age?
            Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, ‘Here doth lie
                Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.’
            For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
                As what he loves may never like too much.