Redemption

Redemption is a gripping look into the life of Ben Callaghan, who is struggling to deal with his intense guilt. Ben is driven almost to the point of insanity by the unspeakable crime he has committed.

For me personally, I found this film confronting and yet it strengthened my belief that God's mercy is boundless.

On a number of levels I was disturbed, which I think was the point of this drama. It was well shot, with an interesting uncomfortable closeness to the characters, but I wanted to pull back. It was intensely emotional which was unpleasant. All of this is ok with me. But I was disturbed with how undefined ‘redemption’ was. Is redemption unconditional acceptance? Remember the guy killed his wife but says he loves her; we should be disturbed by this mangling of the word ‘love.’ If redemption is unconditional acceptance then where is justice for the wife? God forgives murderers who seek forgiveness but Christ pays the penalty of their murder so that love and justice sit together in harmony. This was lacking in this film and for this reason it disturbed me.

[From the Introduction] The story of a man’s struggle with his internal demons: betrayal, jealousy and loss. With the director Peter Hegedus’ background in documentary filmmaking, a level of realism was certainly achieved by the characters. The film was shot in one take – no easy feat. Stylistically, the tight frame shooting lent itself to a revealing of the man’s internal workings. I felt visually, I was a little too close to him at times and my mind wandered off waiting for a wide shot to see where we were. In retrospect, of course they were in a prison.