Many of us have seen what seems to be unprecedented rain
this year. Our lakes and rivers have
been full – many to the point of intervention – or even evacuation. One of my favorite river movies is that
classic, “The African Queen.” Here are
some thoughts on that amazing cruise.
The African Queen is one of the best exodus journey films
ever made. This 1951 film starring Humphrey Bogart as Charlie, a riverboat
captain, and Katharine Hepburn as Rose,
a spinster missionary who is in Africa ministering with her brother, is
set in pre-war German East Africa in August/September 1914. The Germans burn a
mission village, herding off the people, and Rose’s brother dies. This event
sets up the unlikely alliance between Rose and Charlie as they take to a riverboat
and seek freedom on the other side of a lake that is downstream – past a German
Fort, a rapids, and a German gunboat. The river as a character is both
destructive and redemptive in the film.
The power of the story is in the redemptive relationship between
Rose and Charlie. Bogart and Hepburn, two powerful actors, make you want to
believe people can change in the midst of the chaos of war and nature, that
love between two, so different, strong willed and courageous people can happen. The spinster English missionary’s faith is
part of the reason she is so courageous and keeps her virtue. In the movie she
does not lose her faith but can see Charlie as someone whom she needs for this
journey and her/their mission to blow up the German gunboat. They are married
before the Germans try to hang them. The overturned African Queen and her
homemade torpedoes blow up the German boat, and the newly-married couple swims
off to freedom.
The African Queen does what film often does best. It gives
viewers two people with an historical setting of good and evil on a journey
against the odds, united by a mission to overcome evil. The people find love on
a shared journey, an exodus from evil oppression to a promised land across
water. It is the dialogue between two actors at the height of their craft that
makes this story believable and memorable. The dialogue makes the redemptive
relationship work.
As a Christian, a military chaplain and pastor, I have seen
redemptive conversations between people in hard, disappointing life events. I
have had redemptive conversations in the valley of the shadow of death in Iraq
and Afghanistan. I have had redemptive conversations with families who have
lost loved ones and with children wounded and confused by their parents’
divorce. God gave us his word in his son and in the text that we can speak into
the lives of the wounded and broken to bring salvation and courage to face the
chaos and confusion so many face each day.
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