SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, Steve Carrell and Kiera Knightley

Spoiler: the world ends. I tell you this is so that during the movie, when very serious things are happening, you’re not waiting as I was—because it’s Steve Carrell, already—for something to snap, something to pop out and say, “Gotcha!” so that you’d have to slink out of the theater feeling as though you’d been had. I never knew whether to commit to the premise, and that sort of bothered me (and bothers me now), and so I relieve you of it by giving away the end. You’ll feel better knowing, trust me.

No, nothing pops out, no one says “Gotcha.” It’s realio, trulio the end of the world, and the question is: How would you behave? What would you do? Who would you try to find for one last hello/good-bye, one last sweet interlude, one last look at that face, those eyes?

And, is there anyone you’d like to make sure you confront before it all ends, so they know you never forgot, never got over it, never authentically coped?

A giant asteroid field is on track to smack into Mother Earth and knock her out cold. We’re all doomed, and everyone knows it. Dodge Petersen (Mr. Carrell) wants to find his high school sweetheart. Penny (Ms. Knightley) wants to get home to Surrey to be with her family at the end. Trouble is there’s no address for Ms. High School and no more airline service. Dodge and Penny are thrown together when rioting gangs begin looting their apartment building and they are forced to flee to save their lives.

Gangs would riot, of course. And everything else that people do in this movie are things that people would do in this apocalyptic situation. People would eat and drink and do drugs and have sex with randoms. Others would go to the beach to be baptized—long lines there—to get right with God. One woman declares she just wants to eat and eat and eat (I’m thinking a half gallon of chocolate and a pan of baked mac-and-cheese).

But mostly, people want to be with that person. Those people. You know who they are. Go see them.

Because I didn’t know the movie was on the up-and-up, I waited for Mr. Carrell (whom I have only seen in comedies) to do the wink-wink-we-were-only-kidding speech at the end, which would have made the whole movie horrible, because, after all, people who think they have only a few days to live have been known to take matters into their own hands in order to stop the fear, and this happens, and it’s startling and terrible. But no, the world ends.

I would caution Christians not to scream and holler all doctrinally about this movie. There are good questions raised here. Good conversations could arise. Consider, if you will, that many many many many people have faced this scenario: when shock and awe falls out of the sky, when you know the end is coming, and it is coming now, and you can hear it coming, and you are trembling in your bed and waiting for the one boom that matters to you, the one you probably will not hear—

Actually, everyone faces thirty days and counting, don’t they? Not everyone knows it, but many people do. And so the question, “What would you do if the world was ending in thirty days?” is valid, no matter what your eschatology.

One thought on “SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, Steve Carrell and Kiera Knightley”

  1. Just to add to your thoughts: Tyndale House has presented a similar concept in a seven novellas. Here’s the description on Amazon: “Death comes for everyone. But what if you were given seven more hours? Would you go back and relive a previous time in your life? Or would you live those seven more hours, starting now? In this collection of seven full-length novellas, seven writers come together to tackle the questions of life, death, and time as we know it. Each author has taken the same concept, featuring a mysterious central character, and spun their own story.”

    I’ve read one, but thought more about the question outside of the fictional realm. I don’t think you’d enjoy the book I read, but I’d sure love a conversation over tea on the seven hours concept.

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