Wake Up Dead Man

I don't normally do movie reviews, but after numerous people asked me what I thought of Wake Up Dead Man, I figured I should give it a watch. It's my first Knives Out movie, so I wasn't sure what I was getting into. When the movie begins with a young priest (Father Jud) who is reassigned to work with an older priest after getting into some professional difficulties (he struggles to play nicely with the system), I quickly realized this movie would touch on many relevant themes.

Ironically, one of the complaints I've seen from others about the movie is that the introduction (the story of the two priests) was too long. Since I came to the movie for the theological exploration first and the murder mystery second, I did not personally agree with this complaint. I suspect anyone who critiques it might reveal why I liked it. Rather than give you a thematic synopsis or breakdown of the story, I'd like to offer a few reflections on some of my favorite quotes from the movie.

Because I'm focusing on the movie's theological implications, this should be essentially spoiler-free to the murder mystery. But I will tell you this: the movie offers a beautiful depiction of a story that Jesus told. And it's a story we need to learn from today.

Before we begin, there is an epic burn in the movie that deserves to be acknowledged: "That money... is one psalm in the Bible of my bitterness, you fucking child." Which is quite the turn of phrase.

More to the point, there's an initial scene between the detective and Father Jud. The priest asks him how he feels about being in the church. Detective Blanc's response is insightful.

Well, the architecture, that interests me. I feel the grandeur, the... the mystery, the intended emotional effect. It's like someone has shone a story at me that I do not believe. It's built upon the empty promise of a child's fairy tale filled with malevolence and misogyny and homophobia and it's justified untold acts of violence and cruelty while all the while, and still, hiding it's own shameful acts. It's like an ornery mule kicking back, I want to pick it apart and pop its perfidious bubble of belief and get to a truth I can swallow without choking.

In response, Father Jud makes a concession to the detective.

You're right. It's storytelling. The rites and the rituals. Costumes, all of it. It's storytelling. I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that's profoundly true, that we can't express any other way except storytelling?

Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from another movie, V for Vendetta. "Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up." When I'm talking with someone who is wrestling with making sense of the Bible and trying to determine how much of it is literally true, I often ask whether Jesus' parables are true. When Jesus talks about a farmer planting seed, or a vineyard owner, or a father with two sons... are these specific people who literally existed who did the things in the stories?

The answer is obviously no, yet that doesn't make the parables any less true. To use Father Jud's phrase, it's storytelling. I've found that sometimes storytelling is the only way we can make sense of deeper truths.

One of the movie's more bizarre scenes is when the detective solves the murder but then refuses to say what happened. One of the officers is obviously angry and asks, "What the hell happened?"

The detective replies with a line loaded straight from the New Testament. "Road to Damascus. Scales fell from my eyes."

And yet this doesn't mean he suddenly believes in God. He then clarifies:

God is a fiction. My revelation came from... from Father Jud. His example to have grace. Grace for my enemy. Grace for the broken. Grace for those who... deserve it the least, but who need it the most. For the guilty.

This is my favorite scene in the movie. Even though the detective acknowledges he doesn't believe in God, he is so moved by the priest's example that he chooses to act like Jesus Himself. This is the invitation for each of us to live out our faith beyond words. It's not enough for us to have the "right theology" if our life doesn't actually look like Jesus.

Which raises this question: Is it more important for the detective to say he believes in Jesus, or to have this type of moment when he decides (for different reasons) to actually follow the way of Jesus?

Consider a brief story (which also did not literally happen) that Jesus told in Matthew 21:28-31.

But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the older boy, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ The son answered, ‘No, I won’t go,’ but later he changed his mind and went anyway. Then the father told the other son, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘Yes, sir, I will.’ But he didn’t go. “Which of the two obeyed his father?” They replied, “The first.” Then Jesus explained his meaning: “I tell you the truth, corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the Kingdom of God before you do."

Sadly, it seems much of Christianity in the U.S. today is more focused on believing the right things (or at least saying you do) than living a life that looks like the way of Jesus. Which explains how we've seen the shocking dehumanization in our country normalized, even from the pulpit.

This last week, our nation watched an ICE agent shoot Renee Good in the face. Her last words were "Dude, I’m not mad at you." After he ended her life, the murderer's words were to call the woman he just shot a "fucking bitch." Then we were told to believe a narrative that is blatantly absurd, that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist, and most people seem fine with it.

In addition, we discovered ICE is now breaking into homes with their masked crusaders to abduct people. This is not something a healthy democracy allows. And yet here we are, normalizing it each and every day.

I was curious how churches would respond this weekend. The Lead Pastor of the largest church in my state had this to say in his sermon this past weekend (this is a verbatim quote):

 And so Karl Marx said, if we just would redistribute power and money evenly everywhere, that would solve it. Have you ever seen a good socialist society? Me neither. And let's pray to God that America never goes that way. Amen. Like, we can't do that. There's no, that doesn't work.

This was said to a round of applause.

When preachers mock the idea of power and money being distributed evenly to a chorus of celebration (especially in light of what is escalating around us), we've lost the plot. Today's Western Christianity is filled with sons who say they will go and then don't. And we cheer it on. One might say we live in a culture of the "second" son.

But this is what I like most about the movie's ending. Not just that the murder is solved in a way that feels satisfying, but that after all of the terrible examples of Christianity throughout the movie (and they are legion), all it took was one person to live out his faith authentically for this atheist to be intrigued enough to alter course. And ironically, because the priest never said that he "gave his life to Christ," all the second-son Christians would never acknowledge his Christlike actions anyway.

The movie offers a beautiful picture of the journey of the first son, all prompted by one person's flawed example.

We do indeed need more people to wake up. We need more Father Juds.