EPIPHANY AND THE SILVER SCREEN

Alan Soffin

In the 1940 motion picture production of Thornton Wilder’s "Our Town," the opening credits roll, shakily, over the black and white image of a low hill topped by a split-rail fence. The figure of a man appears, climbing slowly into view from behind the hill, the scene bathed in the softness of early light. The fence runs along both sides of a country lane. The man draws the upper rail off out of its post and steps over the lower one. He turns and replaces the rail. He makes his way toward a small wooden bridge.

The scene is suspended in the music of Aaron Copeland, gently singing of the simple, the rural, the eternal. Entering onto the bridge the man stops. He notices something about the fence. Stooping down he picks up a rock. He pounds a nail that has come loose into the rail, fixing it once more securely to the post. He is alone. It is the time before the town will awake. He passes on and, following a sharp bend in the path he walks toward us where he will stop, lean on the fence, and tell us about the town of Grover’s Corners.

In the simplicity, not merely of the scene but of the one practical gesture in which a small repair is made, is all one needs to find religion. So much is given in so little, which is, after all, not unlike the story of our miniscule race.

The man we watch—Thornton’s "stage manager"—is quite alone. No one sees what he does. He is not under orders. The bridge is in no danger. The fence does not hang perilously down. What stops him at the bridge is that some work has come undone. The rough-hewn wood, still speaking of the tree from which it came, has been shaped into a thing of protection, demarcation, and reassurance. It is easy and safe to ford the stream beneath the bridge. Nature and mind have come together in a manner that lets each facet of the world retain the feeling of its origin.

The man picks up a rock, not a hammer. The ringing of the stone on iron is a reprise of the union between humankind and nature that first made the rough-cut path and bridge. The man strikes the nail until it is seated. He does not toss the rock away. He sets it down.

The way it ought to be is now the way it is. The sky, alone, has seen his work. Those who later walk the path will have no knowledge of his act. He profiteth not. His simple gesture is a gesture of respect, all the greater for its unimportance, all the deeper for its simplicity, all the more loving for its closeness to nature.

And the motion picture that follows—a religious wonder, like the folk-carved statues of saints—is all the more profound for its humble truth. As a sophisticate, I might smile in condescension at the small-town idyll of its surface, but if the smile does not in time vanish from my face, then I am truly lost. All this melts away in later iterations of this film—this Platonic "idea" of mortality, travail, and decency set not in "town" but in life on earth.

—Alan Soffin, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, numbers among his interests philosophy, religion, filmmaking, writing, and music ranging from classical through jazz and international sounds. Although an atheist, Soffin seeks nevertheless to value religion and is completing Rethinking Religion, a book on the topic for Cascadia Publishing House.