Film: Bella

Bella is a beautiful film, a film that works for the tender hearted. When I came out of graduate school I thought it my academic duty to teach students the heady difference between “real” literature/film and sentimentality, that snake in the lush garden always ready to tempt the softhearted away from the darker, brain-stressing mind nutrients.

Shortly into my stay at Ricks College, a sojourn that lasted 37 years, I read a C.S. Lewis’ essay on the problem of sentimentality in literature [and film]. He cautioned young professors like myself who were spending a lot of time “professing” the dangers of too much heart.  While reading I found these lines, which changed my approach in a mere 5 minutes. “We teachers are not in the business of clearing a forest, but in the business of planting trees.”

I looked at my students that next hour. Lewis was right. I wasn’t looking at a rain forest. I found myself in the Gobi desert.

My colleagues and friends know that I have always loved the life of the mind and the life in the mind. Yes, let me admit, however, the painful truth: The best literature is cerebral.  I love Bedford Falls, but I know that is not the world of The Brothers Karamazov, a world accessible only by way of that enigmatic genius, Dostoyevsky. And often, as Liz Lemon [Tina Fey; “30 Rock”] says, “I want to go to there.”

Bella is not the turbulent world of the Karamazovs, but it is about some of the same human emotions:  Love, hope, and, most of all, forgiveness. Add Bella to your Christmas film list; join a wonderful Hispanic-American family and take them to London, to Bob Cratchet’s or to Bedford Falls. We’ll break tradition and have a goose or turkey tacos. We’ll ask Jimmy Stewart to do an imitation of Jimmy Stewart. And our hearts will leap with joy.

Jose, played by Mexico’s answer to George Clooney, Eduardo Verastegual, leads us on a journey from a promising soccer career--through a fatal accident--to his brother’s kitchen as a gourmet cook--and finally to Nina [Tammy Blanchard], to love and forgiveness.

Meet Jose’s family: Warm, full of laughter and joy. Who else but our Hispanic brothers and sisters would interrupt a meal to start dancing? Well, our black brothers and sisters would, wouldn’t they? Don’t we need that pepper in our bland daily broth? Does anyone play classical music while eating these days? Or is everyone texting and taking calls from the office?

Because Jose, always in his chef’s whites, his flowing black beard, sitting in the sand, his eyes resting not on the Sea of Galilee but the Pacific Ocean, clearly fills the soul of Savior, we look for Saving.

And we find it. Who is Mary? Who is the oblique reference to the Christ child? And what of family, especially the parents?  Jose’s mother, the Earth Mother, her warm lap where a broken and confused Joseph weeps.

Cap your Christmas with Bella. You may even feel like calling your sister or brother. You know, the girl you grew up with, who washed your face and probably changed your diapers.

Wish her a Merry Christmas. Tell her she’s the “Bella” in your life.