Lasse Hallstrom’s 2000 film Chocolat offers an analogy of the God-human relationship as involving a degree of puppetry, but demonstrates the common sense interpretation of God ultimately in control of humanity being flipped on its head, and instead offers the position that maybe it’s humans that are treating God as their puppet, using him as an authoritative figure through which people can be controlled.
There’s one shot in the film that I have talked about before and will talk about again. It consists of a church interior, beginning high above the back of the minister, showing him towering over the congregation. Like, really towering. He’s looking way, way down on him, putting him in the position of God, visually. Then it swoops down into the pews, slowly gliding over the congregants until it reaches Alfred Molina, continuing to close it tight on his face, and you see him mouthing all the words of the preacher’s sermon as he says them. Because he’s the dude who wrote this guy’s sermon for him. So advance his agenda or something. Who cares what the rest of the movie’s about; that right there is absolutely fabulous filmmaking.
Continue reading on the next page…
