“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer,” Paul wrote in Romans 12:12.
Maybe a few characters from this year’s crop of Best Picture Oscar nominees are familiar with that verse: Perhaps Solomon Northup from 12 Years a Slave, or Philomena from the film of the same name. Many others are probably not. But even so, hope in something—survival, riches, connection—drives all the main characters forward, often through horrible tribulation (though rarely with constant prayer).
This year’s Oscar nominees are not, on the surface, as spiritual as last year’s, when movies like Life of Pi and Lincoln ruminated often about matters of faith, and Les Misérables was as explicitly Christian a nominee as we’ve seen in decades. This fresh crop feels, as a whole, harsher: American Hustle, Her and The Wolf of Wall Street kept our reviewers particularly busy.
But that doesn’t mean they’re devoid of positive messages. Indeed, we discover that hope—sometimes even in the darkest times of tribulation—finds its way through.
We see that theme particularly strongly in 12 Years a Slave and Gravity, considered front-runners to snag the golden statuette.
In 12 Years we meet Solomon, a free man who’s tricked, kidnapped and sent south into slavery, leaving behind a wife and two children. His new environment seems devoid of hope: His second slavemaster is volcanic and cruel. When he spies a sliver of opportunity to find his freedom again, people and circumstances betray him. One could hardly blame him if he wondered if God had forsaken him. And yet, he has hope—if not in this life, in a life to come. “Thou devil!” he shouts at his evil slave master Edwin Epps. “Sooner or later, somewhere in the course of eternal justice thou shalt answer for this sin!” In the end, His perseverance is rewarded, and he’s given the opportunity to rejoice.
Circumstances are different but no less dire in Gravity. Dr. Ryan Stone hovers hundreds of miles above the earth without a way to get home. Ryan, seemingly half dead already, is almost resigned to letting space finish the job. She mourns the fact that she has no one back home to pray for her, that no one even taught her to pray. But then, when space is at its darkest and coldest, something happens that inspires her—encourages her to push through and find a ray of hope again. She’s given a passion for life, and yet faces death with courage and pluck. “The way I see it, there are only two possible outcomes,” she says. “Either I make it down there in one piece and I have one h‑‑‑ of a story to tell. Or I burn up in the next 10 minutes. Either way, whichever way … no harm, no foul!” In that moment, she is indeed rejoicing in her hope in the midst of tribulation.
Gravity and 12 Years were not alone when it comes to hope and perseverance, though. In Captain Phillips, the good cap pulls his frightened crew together and gives them all hope to take back their ship from Somali pirates. And when he himself is captured by the pirates, he holds out hope for rescue. In Dallas Buyers Club, Ron Woodroof holds out hope that he might overcome AIDS, and he does for a good long while.
But we also see stories in which characters place hope in sources bankrupt of such. In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort and his cronies seem to place their hope in money—that unimaginable wealth will somehow fill the emptiness that pervades their stories and souls. American Hustle’s Carmine Polito pins his hope to revitalize his community on a couple of friends and some political bribes—hope that proves hollow when he learns that his friends were con artists working for the FBI. In Her, Theodore—desperate for love and companionship—finds hope in Samantha, a computer operating system that he falls in love with. But that hope, too, vanishes.
These are at least in part, from a spiritual point of view, cautionary stories. As Christians, we know that our only real hope can come from God and Jesus. Everything else—the stuff that those in Wolf of Wall Street or American Hustle seek—is dross.
Perhaps the most poignant illustration of that is found in Nebraska. Old, embittered alcoholic Woody Grant receives a notification that he’s won $1 million. It’s junk mail, of course: That’s pretty obvious to everyone but Woody. But he doesn’t believe it, and he sets out—at first on foot—to claim his winnings.
He quest goes unfulfilled, of course. There is no million-dollar prize to collect. His hope, in one sense, is dashed. And yet through this strange journey, he finds something more—something closer to real, closer to the thing that God values. He finds relationship, building new bonds between him and his son.
Hope is important, but what we place our hope in is even more so. When we hope for the wrong things, we can’t lament the fact that God doesn’t give them to us. God has special plans for us—hopes for us—that go beyond our understanding.
In Philomena, the title character (a faithful Catholic) has gone through decades of tribulation, wondering what became of the son she was forced to give up 50 years earlier. She and skeptical journalist Martin Sixsmith go off in search of the man. But in the course of their quest, they discover that he died years before. Philomena’s hope, it seems, has been dashed. For Martin, the only possibility for a successful story is to see the folks who took away the child in the first place—a Catholic-based ministry—punished.
Instead, Philomena elects to forgive. To move on.
“I don’t wanna hate people,” she tells Martin. “I don’t want to be like you. Look at you.”
“I’m angry,” Martin says.
“Must be exhausting,” Philomena responds.
It would seem that Philomena’s hope has been dashed, but it hasn’t. Her hope, in the end, rests in God. His hope lives within her and gives her the ability to be patient in tribulation, constant in prayer. And as such, even when her temporal wishes are not realized, she has joy—a joy that only God can give.
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