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How can you tell when you are in the presence of some overpowering truth? When even the smallest detail of it leads you farther and farther into truth — when it is like a fountain never failing, or like a mysterious land of mountains and hidden valleys, and when you enter that land, you see that more and more ranges rise up before you, richer valleys, streams dashing down the rocks, and new rivers furrowing their way to an unknown sea. The gospels are like that. They suggest so much more than they say, though what they say has never been said before. Ask a simple question. What was it like to be Simon of Cyrene, after the Resurrection? He is said to be “the father of Alexander and Rufus,” and there’s no reason to specify the names of his sons unless the first Christians knew who they were, because they were among them. What was it like to be Lazarus who had died, once he had been raised to life on earth again? Jesus died in place of the guilty: so what was it like to be the one specific man in the world for whom Jesus most immediately died? What was it like to be awaiting imminent death, only to have Jesus be put in your place, or rather to have you be put in place of the King of the Jews? What was it like to be Barabbas, after the fact?
Pär Lagerkvist, the Swedish author who wrote the novel that is the source for our Film of the Week, Barabbas, was as unlike the rabble-rousing thief, murderer, and insurrectionist as is possible for an ordinary sinner to be. He was a shy and intensely private man. He had grown up, as he said later, with the considerable advantage of having been steeped in the Bible and in hymn books, his only reading. World War I shook his faith to its foundations. What he became after that, no one can really be certain. He was no member of a church. He didn’t profess any faith. But he was always caught up in man’s search for the divine; no humanistic optimism for him. And Barabbas is a novel most spare in language, suggesting, leading, hinting, and hoping — for redemption. The hero is a man whose only connection with God seems to have been entirely accidental. He does not understand Jesus. He does not understand Christians and their call to love their enemies, to pray for those who persecute them. If God is speaking to him, he doesn’t hear it. Or does he?
Barabbas doesn’t turn his life around after his close call with an inexpressibly cruel execution. He continues in his sinful ways, but always dogged by an uneasy conscience. Finally he is sentenced to work in the sulfur mines in southern Italy, where he meets a kind and intelligent young man, a follower of Christ, named Sahak — the name is Armenian, suggesting that by now the faith has made its way far into the interior lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Let’s say that Barabbas has never met anybody like Sahak before, a man who suffers a great deal more from the underground miseries of the mines than the more powerfully built Barabbas does, but who is not vindictive, not desperate, not filled with anguish. And the irony is that Sahak begins to tell Barabbas about the Lord Jesus — who he was, what he did, how he was put to death, and how he rose again; but it was Barabbas who was right there in Jerusalem and at Calvary when those latter events happened!
Of course, this is a film about what it is to rise from the dead, but it’s Barabbas who is dead, not Jesus. Barabbas spends all his life running away from life and rushing upon death. Yet life pursues him despite himself, even when he so badly misunderstands what it is to be a Christian that he believes the slander going about that Christians have set fire to Rome, and so he eagerly takes up his torch and helps the fire to spread. Lagerkvist doesn’t let us say, so easily, that we’d be different from Barabbas, that we would understand, that we would raise our eyes to heaven. But if there is hope for Barabbas, and there is, then who is beyond the reach of grace?
This underrated film is full of scenes of intense human power. Anthony Quinn — not really a stage name; Quinn was the last name of his Irish-Mexican father — is perfect as Barabbas; powerful, hard-favored, lantern-jawed, taciturn, brooding. See him in the arena, unarmed, against the gladiatorial champion, a cruel always-laughing barbarian named Torvald, played to the hilt by Jack Palance. But pay close attention to his unlikely friendship with Sahak (Vittorio Gassman), as young in soul as he is fresh in countenance. Notice how often he is crushed to learn that he has gotten it all wrong again as always, but how, when he is tempted to give it up, somehow he does not. Could God raise a table in the wilderness? He who made the world can do much more than that. He can raise up a sinner.
This is a film to watch with your older children, to think about and maybe to talk about a little, or just to be quiet and let the story do the job.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
It was the salt mines in Sicily
If Tony could make available a must know poetry syllabus that would be swell.