We saw that last night. It was...okay. My wife enjoyed it more than I did. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't enthused by it, either.
The film touts itself heavily as a retelling of Job, although I'd call it "loosely inspired" by Job.
It has a couple of Jobian lessons in it. But the lead character is not enough like Job to have captured some of the more significant issues of Job. That would be okay, except that the story itself pounds you on the head to see it as a retelling of Job...and it's not that. It's just a loose inspiration.
Job is a hard story to tell satisfactorily as a protagonist tale. While it speaks mainly to the relationship between God and man, it never resolves Job's big question of "Why me, God? Why me in particular?" And this movie doesn't get to that, either.
In fact, it rather muddies the situation, because in this movie the answer might well be, "Because you weren't 'all that' in the first place, bud.'"
The most significant fact scripture establishes about Job is that he is an extremely devout and righteous man, the most devout and righteous man in the world at that time. The scripture says so twice, even putting that into the mouth of God Himself. That's an important point in the story of Job. Job starts out with absolutely no reason why he should not have God's complete favor, and in fact, he does have God's complete favor. That favor is removed for absolutely no reason of Job's actions.
The protagonist of the movie, Kevin, is...an okay guy by modern standards. At the opening of the movie, which starts with the 2008 housing bubble collapse, his hedge fund company (in which he's a fund manager) goes out of business in a big way, leaving everyone in the company suddenly unemployed. That implies the company was heavily into false dealings...and so was he. Even if he was not, he was still literally in the company of falsely dealing people. Nor is Kevin devout (he says he went to church when he was a kid). And by the time the movie places him face-to-face with Satan, it's done nothing to show that he had become particularly devout or was any more righteous. The movie implies that the housing bubble crisis was Satan's first move in smacking Kevin down, so Kevin certainly was neither devout or particularly righteous at that point.
And then, when put face-to-face with Satan, he does something very not-nice to an innocent person. It could be argued that he didn't believe that something bad was going to happen...but it was very clear that person knew more about the situation than he did, and that person clearly, obviously, painfully believed something very bad was about to happen. When Satan said, "You sure?" a good man seeing that absolutely terrorized innocent face would have said, "Okay, then, that chair over there. Do it to that chair over there."
Another diversion from the scriptural story of Job is that Kevin always had his wife to place his hope in, rather than God. Even when that hope could have been taken from him, when there might have been a "curse God and die" moment, the story pointedly removes that finality right at the start of Kevin's dealings with Satan, so Kevin can continue to put his hope in his wife.
The story did present a huge character twist that was decently embedded, one of those where you say, "Okay, they laid a fat red herring in the path, but then gave us reasonable clues to the truth, and we didn't get it. That was fair."
There were lots of elements that didn't really make sense in the flow of the narrative. They seemed to have been just "stuff happening" rather than a diabolically strategic turning of the screw by Satan. Kevin certainly shows us perseverance, but no more than many faithful people exhibit today in similarly terrible conditions. There are a lot of people today living in conditions more desperate than the world in which Satan leaves Kevin. At least he has reason to hope for better that many people today do not have...and that Job did not have. I'm thinking of Christians in North Korea as an example.
Job's only hope was to confront God directly, not to confront Satan, and that's a big difference in this story.
So, I think I'd have found the story more appealing if they had touted it as "loosely inspired by Job" rather than repeatedly punching me in the face with, "This is the story of Job." That made me a lot more critical of that claim rather than just letting me accept the story as it was.
The film touts itself heavily as a retelling of Job, although I'd call it "loosely inspired" by Job.
It has a couple of Jobian lessons in it. But the lead character is not enough like Job to have captured some of the more significant issues of Job. That would be okay, except that the story itself pounds you on the head to see it as a retelling of Job...and it's not that. It's just a loose inspiration.
Job is a hard story to tell satisfactorily as a protagonist tale. While it speaks mainly to the relationship between God and man, it never resolves Job's big question of "Why me, God? Why me in particular?" And this movie doesn't get to that, either.
In fact, it rather muddies the situation, because in this movie the answer might well be, "Because you weren't 'all that' in the first place, bud.'"
The most significant fact scripture establishes about Job is that he is an extremely devout and righteous man, the most devout and righteous man in the world at that time. The scripture says so twice, even putting that into the mouth of God Himself. That's an important point in the story of Job. Job starts out with absolutely no reason why he should not have God's complete favor, and in fact, he does have God's complete favor. That favor is removed for absolutely no reason of Job's actions.
The protagonist of the movie, Kevin, is...an okay guy by modern standards. At the opening of the movie, which starts with the 2008 housing bubble collapse, his hedge fund company (in which he's a fund manager) goes out of business in a big way, leaving everyone in the company suddenly unemployed. That implies the company was heavily into false dealings...and so was he. Even if he was not, he was still literally in the company of falsely dealing people. Nor is Kevin devout (he says he went to church when he was a kid). And by the time the movie places him face-to-face with Satan, it's done nothing to show that he had become particularly devout or was any more righteous. The movie implies that the housing bubble crisis was Satan's first move in smacking Kevin down, so Kevin certainly was neither devout or particularly righteous at that point.
And then, when put face-to-face with Satan, he does something very not-nice to an innocent person. It could be argued that he didn't believe that something bad was going to happen...but it was very clear that person knew more about the situation than he did, and that person clearly, obviously, painfully believed something very bad was about to happen. When Satan said, "You sure?" a good man seeing that absolutely terrorized innocent face would have said, "Okay, then, that chair over there. Do it to that chair over there."
Another diversion from the scriptural story of Job is that Kevin always had his wife to place his hope in, rather than God. Even when that hope could have been taken from him, when there might have been a "curse God and die" moment, the story pointedly removes that finality right at the start of Kevin's dealings with Satan, so Kevin can continue to put his hope in his wife.
The story did present a huge character twist that was decently embedded, one of those where you say, "Okay, they laid a fat red herring in the path, but then gave us reasonable clues to the truth, and we didn't get it. That was fair."
There were lots of elements that didn't really make sense in the flow of the narrative. They seemed to have been just "stuff happening" rather than a diabolically strategic turning of the screw by Satan. Kevin certainly shows us perseverance, but no more than many faithful people exhibit today in similarly terrible conditions. There are a lot of people today living in conditions more desperate than the world in which Satan leaves Kevin. At least he has reason to hope for better that many people today do not have...and that Job did not have. I'm thinking of Christians in North Korea as an example.
Job's only hope was to confront God directly, not to confront Satan, and that's a big difference in this story.
So, I think I'd have found the story more appealing if they had touted it as "loosely inspired by Job" rather than repeatedly punching me in the face with, "This is the story of Job." That made me a lot more critical of that claim rather than just letting me accept the story as it was.
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