An Invitation to Transcendence

            A question. What are Paul Rivers’ needs in 21 Grams? In The Anatomy of Story (which focuses on screenwriting), John Truby writes: “In better stories, the hero has a moral need in addition to a psychological need. The hero must overcome a moral flaw and learn how to act properly toward other people” (41).

            An early scene in the movie shows Paul sneaking a smoke while his wife is out. He is severely debilitated by heart disease; he wheezes because, even with a portable oxygen tank, he can’t get enough air; he goes into the bathroom, closes the door, opens the window, turns off the oxygen, and smokes a cigarette. He has a psychological need to overcome risky behavior that is hurting only himself; and he has a moral need which has something to do with being sneaky.

            At about the middle point, Paul is having lunch with Cristina. Having exhibited questionable moral behavior, prying into transplant surgery records and stalking, he insinuates himself into Cristina’s life. The viewer sees him burning to tell her his theory that there is “a number hidden in every act of life.” From what he says and the expression on his face, it appears that he is fascinated by the mystery that lies beneath the surface of life.

            At the end Paul dies. The viewer hears his voice, as if he hasn’t died at all. He expresses the odd thought that when someone dies his body weight drops immediately by 21 grams. Curious about where the 21 grams go, he asks a long series of questions, including: “How many lives do we live? How many times do we die?” The effect is to bring the viewer to a state of moral reflection. To answer the questions, she looks into the record of Paul’s life and recalls personal life experiences. She begins to wonder what the movie’s tag line, “life goes on,” really means.

            In Reel Spirituality, Robert Johnston writes about transcendence. The first time he brings it up, he says that, for many, movies provide “alternate forms of transcendence. They provide a reel spirituality” (28; his emphasis). He means the shift of awareness that can occur in a viewer, “away from the self to a wider awareness” (30, quoting Paul Woolf, a friend, screenwriter and ordained Jewish storyteller). He quotes C. S. Lewis, who says that a story should mediate something more than what we see in everyday life (110). He distinguishes between transcendence with a capital T, which refers to encounters with God, experiences of the Holy (242-249), saying that such experiences can’t be induced; and down-to-earth recognitions, either that “there is something more out there” (278) or that there is a deeper, “more central region” in one’s own self (126; 266).

            Two questions. Is Paul’s sneakiness a distortion of another kind of need, a spiritual need, to pry beneath the surface of life? Is the plot device that closes the movie, that is, Paul’s disembodied voice, an invitation to the viewer to experience a wider awareness than usual?

.