I saw a movie a while back--for the life of me I can't remember what it was (it's driving me nuts)--in which a young man was suffering terribly because he was rejected for being gay. It just broke my heart. Even though I knew he was a fictional character, he was real to me, because I knew that there were a million real boys just like him.
Bobby was one of those real boys. And yet, Prayers for Bobby didn't move me the way that fictional movie did. That's not a critique of the movie. I think maybe I'm not letting myself feel the tragedy of it, because it would hurt too much.
But I'm not made of stone. There were moments in the film that brought tears to my eyes. There's one particularly wrenching scene in which Mary Griffith's acknowledges that she had always known her son was different, and she realizes that God didn't cure him because there was nothing wrong with him. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a parent and to have to face the realization that you drove your child to suicide. I don't know how someone lives with that, and I can't help feeling for her. But my feelings are all mixed up. I'm angry that she didn't have the courage to face her son's sexuality when he was still alive--because if she had he might still be alive--but I'm so glad and so proud that she finally did what so few people are able to do: She changed. She changed her mind, she changed herself, she analyzed a lifetime of beliefs and assumptions and when she found that they didn't hold up, she let go of them. She confronted and accepted the truth about her son, and about herself, and she allowed it to transform her. That takes tremendous strength and courage, and she deserves our respect.
There's another scene at the end that I know will bring mixed reactions from this crowd. I won't describe it in detail, but it's one of those scenes that's deliberately designed to pull at your heartstrings. I know some people here will find it overly sentimental and just too much, but at the time I was watching it, I was in no mood to be my usual cynical self--perhaps because I was at my parents' house visiting for my mother's birthday--so I let myself be moved by it, by the beauty of its sentiment.
Watch it or don't watch it, as you see fit. But if you decide to watch it, set aside your cynicism and silence your inner critic, and just let yourself experience the story, in all its ugliness and in all its beauty.