It seemed an unlikely choice. Christianity Today cited Lars and the Real Girl as one of the best films of 2007, and my colleagues here at UMR all heartily recommended it. So now I’m recommending the movie to you. It came out on DVD yesterday.
The story: Lars Lindstrom is a lonely, painfully shy young man who’s been wounded by life. When friends and family reach out to him, he always backs away.
So you can imagine how excited his family is when he tell tells them he’s met a young woman online. But then it turns out that his girlfriend, Bianca, is a giant inflatable doll. She’s very religious, and she’s confined to a wheelchair, as Lars explains. And he is most devoted to her.
On paper, the plot of Lars and the Real Girl sounds wacky and cynically postmodern. In truth, this tender story resonates with a genuine and humane message.
Everyone in his small town – Lars’ family, friends, co-workers and fellow church members – thinks he’s nuts. But his family's physician is more circumspect.
Maybe Lars has created Bianca for a reason, she says. She’s a widow herself and knows that loss leads to a long road to recovery.
Maybe all we can do, she says, is go along with it, and see what Lars has to tell us, through Bianca.
Church members gather, knowing Lars will bring Bianca to worship on Sunday.
Predictably, some are ready to commit him to a mental institution. But aside from his devotion to Bianca, Lars is fully functional and independent; there’s no reason to send him away.
“What would Jesus do?” the pastor asks the congregants, and there’s no irony in that question. So it’s agreed. Everyone will embrace Bianca. Lars loves her, so they’ll love her too.
Soon, family members are helping bathe and dress Bianca. Church members enlist her as a volunteer at the local hospital. Soon she’s a busy member of the community. And finally, Lars and his friends and family are able to attend to the wounds that Lars had been nursing alone for years – the death of his mother, the emotional absence of his father.
It’s said that some truths can only be expressed through fiction. The truth of Lars’ pain, in the end, was only accessible through a fake human named Bianca. Through this inhuman object, with the help of others, Lars finds his own humanity.
Viewers who can suspend disbelief will discover, as Lars family and friends do, that Bianca is in fact a “real” girl, the only girl who can bind Lars’ wounds and finally put them to rest.
It's a wonderful story about community and kindness. Put it in the Netflix queue.
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