by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
D- Rated PG13 102 min.
The plot of The Last Sin Eater centers on the 10-year-old Cadi Forbes, played by Liana Liberato, who feels responsible for the death of her sister. The movie effectively establishes the warm relationship Cadi has with her grandmother, only to kill poor Granny off.
The most intriguing aspect of the film was Welsh the cultural traditions we get to see in beginning of the movie. When Cadi’s grandmother dies, we get a taste of their superstition as they stop clocks and cover mirrors. At the funeral, Cadi encounters the Sin Eater, a man whose sole purpose is to eat away the sins of the dead. Cadi, touched by the man’s suffering, does the unthinkable and looks at the Sin Eater, something that is forbidden because the man is supposed to be tainted by the sins of others.
I’ve always found the concept of a sin-eater to be fascinating. The idea that a man could absorb all of your sins, damning himself in the process, appeals to the idea that someone must pay for our sins. The sin-eaters will eventually suffer eternal damnation.
The Sin Eater in Cadi’s community suffers in this life almost as much as he will supposedly suffer in the next. Almost no one has voluntarily looked him in the eye for 20 years. For fear of tainting others with his absorbed sins, he has neither touched another human being nor has he been touched. Cadi knows his suffering is real and seeks to assuage her guilt and pain over her sister’s death by getting the Sin-Eater to take away her sins before her death. Liana Liberato as Cadi certainly inhabits her role well, and I look forward to seeing her work in the future.
Cadi is introduced to Christianity by a wandering preacher who seeks to convert the people. This man of God, played by Henry Thomas (who looks nothing like he did as Eliot in E.T.) has his best moment when he sits Cadi down and begins quoting long winded passages from the Bible. Seeing her completely blank look, he asks her “You don’t understand any of this, do you?” It was one of the best moments in the movie because it was funny without trying to be. Eventually, he explains the message of Jesus Christ in terms she can understand, saying that He was the “first sin-eater.”
This movie wasn’t crammed with special effects, and probably didn’t need what it had. What it had was pretty awful, and placed in pivotal moments. I wished they had simply implied that Cadi was standing on a log, high over a ravine, showing it from her point of view, rather than distracting me with something that looked like it was produced on You Tube.
Another thing I found incredibly distracting was the patently manipulative score, laid over nearly every moment. I don’t think that the acting was horrible; it was in fact pretty good, despite the script. It was the over-the-top score that ruined quiet moments that I felt could have garnered an emotional response, if not for the music. Instead the music made me feel as though I was being dragged to an emotional conclusion that I may have arrived at anyway. With the score in place, I never got to find out.
The movie will no doubt find ardent defenders in the faith-based community, because it’s obviously aimed at the already faithful or those who are ready to accept Jesus into their hearts, maybe even right after the movie. I don’t object to religious content in a movie (I really enjoyed The Nativity Story last year) but I do object to a movie that’s pushy about its message. Coming to my own emotional conclusions is much more satisfying than being forced to them like a groom at a shot gun wedding.
I found it a tad ludicrous that the children in the film had never heard of Jesus, nor never seen a Bible. Though the Welsh were (and are) thoroughly superstitious, they are a people who have always hedged their spiritual bets—employing both pagan superstition and a prayer to the Christian God in matters of the soul and spirit.
One thing that also bothered me was that the Brogan Kai, who seemed to need redemption the most out of all the settlers, was mostly reduced to a bad guy caricature. Cadi’s sins are small by comparison. Those who got redeemed weren’t all that bad to begin with.
I really wanted to like this movie, but so much is so wrong. The host of sins in the script, score and production values could probably only be forgiven by Jesus himself---or his very faithful followers.
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