A movie review: of The Shack
Reviewed by Bob Mulkey
I read The Shack by William Paul Young years ago, but it did not make much of an impact on me. Because I had somehow been prepared for it, the movie affected me much more deeply. Now I want to see The Shack again, and I want to read the book again.
The Shack forces you to think about the fact that we are all subject to the horrible possibilities of chance and that grief is raw pain that must be faced and experienced if it is to be healed. A father takes his three children on a camping trip while their mother stays behind to do some work. As the capsizing of a canoe in which his two older children are playing distracts Mack and other campers around a lake, his beautiful little daughter is kidnapped and killed in a shack deep in the woods.
After he and his family have just begun their mourning, Mack finds a mysterious note in his mailbox inviting him to the shack. It is signed with the name his wife gives God, “Papa.” His decision to accept the invitation and go back to the place where investigators found his little girl’s bloody dress leads to his encounter with the goodness of God despite the unfairness of life, and the healing love of God within and through the relationships of Papa, Son, and Spirit (Her name is Sarayu.) – the Trinity.
The scenes that unfold in a place made beautiful by “The Relationship” of the three brings you into direct contact with these realities: faith is not certainty; expressing anger at God can clear the way for the healing of grief; forgiveness is not overlooking the pain somebody has caused you; and forgiveness is healing the hurt that you don't deserve so that you can love and forgive others.
Apparently for dramatic effect Mack, the grieving father, does a lot of whispering. Not a good technique in my opinion. I found it very difficult to hear some of the dialogue.
As to the theology of The Shack, I am glad to say that it speaks to the need we all have to get beyond the thought that God is sitting off somewhere up above. As Papa assures Mack, God is always with us. I love the movie’s depiction of God as a black woman, a Jewish man, and an Asian woman – a mysterious and beautiful metaphor for the Trinity. Good theology, according to William Paul Young, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, is relationship and mystery.
The final scene has us back in church with the family. The camera pans up to a cartoonish stained glass window depicting God as an old man with a long white beard. We have just seen in Mack’s experience at the shack that God is not like that at all. God is not a being way off in the distance that we have to invite into the world in order to see God do some miracles. God is the Mystery in which “we live and move and have our being.” God is the loving Relationship into which we are invited.
The Shack is a good attempt to tell a powerful story that helps people feel some new feelings about God and think some creative thoughts about God. I want people to see this movie because it will give them a vision of God as the mysterious Relationship within the Trinity.
Bob Mulkey is Pastor of New Covenant Baptist Church in DeLand, Florida. He is an ethicist, writer, and preacher.
