Mr. Church

Mr. Church (2016), written by Susan McMartin and directed by Bruce Beresford, was a refreshing spot on reality of the relationships we have with people. Charlie (played by Britt Robertson) takes us on a journey of her growing relationship with Mr. Church (played by Eddie Murphey) as she blossoms from a little girl who refuses to accept Mr. Church, into a mother who sees Mr. Church as her home. Charlie’s mother, Marie (played by Natascha McElhone) suffers from cancer and Charlie, who was written as a wonderfully realistic character, grapples with the harshness of both loving and hating someone for leaving you, even before they’ve left. She both pulls Mr. Church close while pushing him away. But everything in this movie is planned and connects to either a set up or a pay off causing every action and interaction to feel right.

Since we’re talking about relationships, Charlie also tickles the ideas of starting a romantic relationship with Owen (played by Xavier Samuel) which doesn’t end up going anywhere, and Charlie is never optimized or categorized as being worth anything because of a romantic relationship. There is no possession. She goes on to have a child with someone she doesn’t know, or at least says she doesn’t know, and returns home to Mr. Church. On what circumstances she returns, we do not know, but the story is about home. It is about comfortability and self-worth. It is about loneliness and what is important to people on the deep levels of their heart and souls.

This movie is also about privacy, and about what is important for living, truly living. Charlie knows Mr. Church to be a cook, and an excellent one at that. She knows him to be a wonder of knowledge about books, but he keeps a distance, demanding his privacy about where he goes at night. We soon find out that Mr. Church goes to a night club and gets drunk, night after night. It isn’t until the end, after Mr. Church’s death that we figure out he played the piano there. Frankie Twiggs (played by Thom Barry) is the owner of the night club and arrives at Mr. Church’s wake. He praises Mr. Church’s playing skills, something Charlie had no idea about, but when Mr. Church’s recipes and food are mentioned Frankie reveals that he had no idea Mr. Church was a cook. So, this movie is also about the hidden talents that are within everyone. The things we have no idea about. The things we don’t explain or mention to people, separating those worlds within our own. Charlie herself went to college to become a novelist, a world-renowned writer, but instead becomes a mother. That is her life, and it isn’t until her daughter is a few years old and Mr. Church has died that she finds out all the hidden talents she had accumulated from watching Mr. Church.

It makes one think on the relationships had with people in their own life. Perhaps how we’ve taken them for granted, or judged them, or kept them out of our world. Mr. Church is a story about loving someone without possession, of allowing them to have their own lives, as they are only a part of ours as we are theirs.

January 6, 2019