The Unbroken Reverie

Mary (Jena Malone) and Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore) are best friends. Hilary Faye is popular and influential in their school. She runs a very charismatic clique that campaigns godliness. Mary has a boyfriend named Dean (Chad Faust). Her life looks faultless till she discovers that her boyfriend is gay. Jesus appears before her in a vision, commanding her to save her boyfriend from homosexuality. Mary gets that Jesus tells her to give up her virginity so as to save Dean. Mary finds out that she is pregnant. Her friends, Hilary Faye and her faithful followers turn against her. She starts on being hesitant of her Christian faith because God lets her get pregnant. For the moment, the Jewish-rebel, Cassandra (Eva Amurri) dates Hilary’s wheel-chair bound brother, Roland. Together with the skateboarder son of their school’s principal, Patrick (Patrick Fugit), they become the new real friends of Mary, who sustain her in her circumstances. At the end of the film, Hilary starts to doubt of her faith also, and then she starts breaking apart. Realizing her mistakes, she becomes a true Christian.

The movie is quite funny and it may not seem to be a serious film about salvation, but it reflects on the questions “what is a church?”, and “who can be considered as real Christians?” A church is a group of people who sustain and support one another. Those are the people whom we can fall back on or ask for help during the times of sorrow. They never leave us; instead, they focus on assisting us especially when we need them. There are people who only seem good in the beginning, but when trials come, they are the first ones who will judge you. They, sometimes, even use the Gospels as their weapons to blow you away. They definitely lack in understanding. They show failures in opening their mentality and feelings for others. They react negatively and harshly to the wrongs of others, doing acts that are not Christian against someone who does not fit to their principles. But then, they still call themselves followers of Christ.

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"
- Isaiah 5:20

The scene when Dean arrives with his homosexual lover during the Christian prom, and magically says, "I know in my heart that Jesus still loves me!":

The movie speaks to us, Christians, that when our deeds are no longer causing others good, and if they are already hurting our neighbors, we have to brood over it, see what is wrong, and open our hearts and minds to new ideas. We have to consider that we are also not perfect. If we really want to become Christ-like, then death is a part of the equation (I do not mean physically). Well, that is the paradox of life; we need to die in order to be alive again. What we need in order to maintain our Christianity is the kind of death that kills what is evil and allows for the refinement of what is good out of the ruins.

May we learn to continually offer up praise by following Him unto His worthiness.