Sunday, July 11, 2010

The Answer Man - Movie Review


Everybody seems to be searching for God in one way or another. Once you get passed the religion screen, God is a totally different realm of curiosity and wonder.

Ran into a film on cable TV that was shown at the Sundance Film Festival but has not yet made a commercial success of its showing. Give it time.

It is a study of life, of adults in the big city Philadelphia and their individual spin in the search and need for a definition or understanding of the God thing.

Arlen Faber wrote a best seller twenty years ago goes the plot. The bestseller is called “Me and God” and the author lives as a recluse in his downtown mansion only to be forced to interface at first with a chiropractor, he throws his back out, and a book store owner, out of rehab, and in desperate need to know why God lets certain things happen in people’s lives.

Arlen seems at first to know all the answers. Thus the title The Answer Man.

The Answer Man (2009)
 
The film is a bit on the light side with few grand dramatic moments. But that is okay. The film follows the subject matter in appropriate taste and attention to the topic.

Best to follow the storyline and explore with the characters their place in the universe and in their relationship to God. There is a series of situations and insights as to why the man, the author, should know everything because of these conversations with God.  These insights stand along side and in many ways match the general public’s hunger for the absolute answers to life.

Writer and Director John Hindman shows remarkable talent with his limited resume. Jeff Daniels, who is an unrecognized national treasure for his acting abilities, does Arlen to the T.

I highly recommend this movie on cable or DVD.

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