• Movie Review: The Invisible

    You'll have to bear with me. I don't go to theaters often. This film, The Invisible, is out on DVD already, so many of you have already seen it. The film stars Justin Chatwin and Margarita Levieva. I was drawn in and intrigued by the movie trailer some time ago. My pregnant wife surprisingly picked a non-romantic comedy for our Friday night flick. So we sat down on the couch and watched The Invisible.

    You have to make it past the first half hour of this film. It starts off interestingly enough, but then seems to become very predictable for a good ten to fifteen minutes. My excitement and interest dimmed noticeably at that point. 

    If for no other reason, see this film and focus on Annie (Levieva). Annie is a teenage criminal. She's so tough she picks on boys like it's nothing. She steals, bullies, threatens, and eventually kills. What I love about her character is that we see someone who commits the most heinous offense known to man – murder. She nearly kills Nick (Chatwin) with her unchecked aggression. 

    Nick is undead. He is nearly dead. And he follows Annie around, trying to get someone to solve his near murder and save him before he dies for real. He is invisible to the world around him. And yet, Annie hears his voice inside her mind.

    But the real gem of the story come from following Annie and seeing her as a person. It is our typical response to vilify murderers as inhuman beasts or monsters. We want to classify them this way, because we need to believe that murderers are different than us. We need to know that we could not murder. So we hate and mock and call down damnation upon the guilty in order to spread wide the gulf between us and the heinous beasts that can choose to commit so horrible an act. 

    Nick can't see Annie as anything but a murderer until he sees her love her little brother. We are forced to consider what if other people are like this. What if everyone guilty of a crime still has loyal, noble love for someone somewhere? What do we do then?

    By the end of this film, Annie is the heroine. We want her to succeed. We realize that she is more a victim of a broken home and wrong choices than of being an other-than-human beast. She is very human, and even beautiful, when she takes the hooded sweatshirt off and uncovers her hair.

    Nick looks upon his would-be killer and sees a beautiful young woman. He is spellbound. She is more than thug. She is more than an animal. She is more than just "broken". She is a person, desperate for something good.

    It is a beautiful sub-plot within the story. It IS the story, as far as I'm concerned. I won't tell you the ending, in case you still want to see the film. But the deepest feeling comes from knowing that she's in a spot she doesn't know how to get out of, but her heart can be softened and she probably would have lived a better life given the chance.

    See this film. See it, and realize that there is beauty in every human heart. Even if you can't see it.